Natural compound in basil may protect against Alzheimer's disease pathology

Medical XPress / University of South Florida / Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience ^ | Oct. 5, 2021 | Atefeh Razazan et al

[ConservativeMind]

Fenchol, a natural compound abundant in some plants including basil, can help protect the brain against Alzheimer's disease pathology.

…Then, they performed large-scale virtual screening of more than 144,000 natural compounds to find potential candidates that could mimic the same beneficial effect of microbiota produced SCFAs in activating FFAR2 signaling. Identifying a natural compound alternative to SCFAs to optimally target the FFAR2 receptor on neurons is important, because cells in the gut and other organs consume most of these microbial metabolites before they reach the brain through blood circulation, Dr. Yadav noted.

Dr. Yadav's team narrowed 15 leading compound candidates to the most potent one. Fenchol, a plant-derived compound that gives basil its aromatic scent, was best at binding to the FFAR's active site to stimulate its signaling.

Further experiments in human neuronal cell cultures, as well as Caenorhabditis (C.) elegans (worm) and mouse models of Alzheimer's disease demonstrated that fenchol significantly reduced excess Aβ accumulation and death of neurons by stimulating FFAR2 signaling, the microbiome sensing mechanism. When the researchers more closely examined how fenchol modulates Aβ-induced neurotoxicity, they found that the compound decreased senescent neuronal cells, also known as "zombie" cells, commonly found in brains with Alzheimer's disease pathology.

Zombie cells stop replicating and die a slow death. Meanwhile, Dr. Yadav said, they build up in diseased and aging organs, create a damaging inflammatory environment, and send stress or death signals to neighboring healthy cells, which eventually also change into harmful zombie cells or die.

"Fenchol actually affects the two related mechanisms of senescence and proteolysis," Dr. Yadav said of the intriguing preclinical study finding. "It reduces the formation of half-dead zombie neuronal cells and also increases the degradation of (nonfunctioning) Aβ, so that amyloid protein is cleared from the brain much faster."

[Wissa]

The reason that I prefer the 1 cup plastic containers with lids is so I can heap the chopped up leaves in the container before putting the lid on. That allows me to squeeze out more air. A lot of people use ice cube trays, but I thought that method left me with the choices of an end product that was either too fluffy or too oily or chopped finer than I like.

[telescope115]

Mine were certainly too oily. Plus I didn’t have enough basil to fill up the entire tray, I only managed to get five cubes.
Next year-👍

[matthew fuller]

Thanks for that info! I have a few plants that I can harvest from now.