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Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 645257, 11 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/645257
Isolation of Resveratrol from Vitis Viniferae Caulis and Its Potent Inhibition of Human Tyrosinase
BK21 Medical Education Program for Human Resources, Department of Molecular Medicine and Cell and Matrix Research Institute, Kyungpook National University School of Medicine, Jung-gu, Daegu 700-422, Republic of Korea
Received 2 November 2012; Revised 27 December 2012; Accepted 5 January 2013
Academic Editor: Senthamil R. Selvan
Copyright © 2013 Jiaa Park and Yong Chool Boo. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Tyrosinase (TYR) catalyzes rate-limiting reactions of cellular melanin synthesis, and its inhibitors are of commercial interest as potential skin whitening agents. However, the limited availability of human TYR makes the screening of TYR inhibitors difficult. To overcome this hurdle, we transformed nonmelanocytic human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells to express human TYR constitutively. Using these cells as a source of human TYR, the ethanolic extracts of 52 medicinal plants grown in Korea were tested for human TYR activity, and the extract of Vitis Viniferae Caulis (dried stems of the grape tree, Vitis vinifera L.) was found to inhibit human TYR activity potently. An active compound was isolated from this extract by solvent fractionation followed by liquid column chromatography and identified as resveratrol by spectroscopic and chromatographic analyses. Resveratrol was determined to be a highly potent inhibitor of human TYR ( μg mL−1) as compared with p-coumaric acid ( μg mL−1) and arbutin ( μg mL−1) and inhibited melanin synthesis by human epidermal melanocytes at subtoxic concentrations. This study suggests that resveratrol and resveratrol-containing extracts of Vitis Viniferae Caulis have a potential use as skin whitening agents.