ANTIINFLAMMATORY EFFECTS OF ALPHA-PINENE EXTRACTED FROM Pinus mercusii ON LEVELS OF TNF-ALPHA SIGNALLING, iNOS, AND APOPTOSIS OF NEURONAL CELLS

Husnul Khotimah1*, Diana Lyrawati 1,2,* and Masruri 3

1 2 3

Laboratory of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Brawijaya University, Jl. Veteran, Malang - 65145, Indonesia. Department of Pharmacy, Dr. Saiful Anwar, Jl. Jaksa Agung Suprapto, Malang, Indonesia Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science,

Brawijaya University, Jl. Veteran, Malang 65145, Indonesia

Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer and Parkinson, are mostly occurring in the elderly population. Recent studies showed that the number of patients of these diseases are increasing all over the world and appearing to affect younger population as well. One of the underlying causes is inflammation of neuron and glial cells in the brain. Natural monoterpene alpha-pinene has been known to possess antiinflammatory properties which may be beneficial to alleviate neurodegenerative diseases. In this study we report the antiinflammatory effects of alpha-pinene isolated from Pinus mercusii on neuronal cells. As a model, we used neuronal cell culture of Rattus norvegicus (Wistar) exposed to lypopolisaccharide (LPS) as the inflammatory inducer. We found that the administration of alpha pinene not only could reduce the TNF-alpha expression which was associated with ~30% reduction of apoptosis of the neuronal cells, but also decreased iNOS expression and NO. When we used L-NAME as NO blocker we found that NO level were decrease but not the expression of iNOS. These results suggest that alpha-pinene of Pinus mercusii may be developed as an alternative antiinflammatory agent to prevent and/or cure the neurodegenerative diseases. Further study is undergoing to explore further the mechanism of antiinflammatory effect of alpha-pinene on other inflammatory mediators such as NOS, NO and calcium signalling in neuronal cells.