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EDITORIAL article

Front. Immunol., 17 November 2023
Sec. Nutritional Immunology
This article is part of the Research Topic Immunometabolic response of natural products in inflammation and cancer View all 5 articles

Editorial: Immunometabolic response of natural products in inflammation and cancer

  • 1School of Pharmacy, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China
  • 2New York College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Mineola, NY, United States
  • 3Macao Centre for Research and Development in Chinese Medicine, State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, University of Macau, Macao, Macao SAR, China

Immunometabolism is an interwoven conception in modern pharmacology research. New technologies, new discoveries, and new ideas are being added to make this conception more mature and richer. The concept of immunometabolism is particularly significant in basic and clinical research on inflammation and cancer. Since most of the drugs are derived from natural products, research on immunometabolism for natural products is also valuable for new drug discovery.

This Research Topic collects several interesting articles. Norbergenin, a polyphenolic gallic acid derivative, frequently seen in the use of ethnobotanical medicine. Li et al. explored the mechanism of impairing LPS-induced signaling in macrophages and pointed out the role of glycolysis and TCA cycle intermediates. Because of its anti-inflammatory potential, this study is a typical study of immunometabolism, which is particularly inspiring for researchers who study the LPS stimulated macrophages in inflammation. Meanwhile, a combination of proteomic analysis, metabolomic analysis and bioinformatic analysis in one study is also worth learning from the comprehensive verification. As a natural substance, creatine is an indispensable organic compound utilized in various biological activities. The human body can obtain creatine from a variety of natural sources, such as fish and meat, and is taken up by the creatine transporter. Not only that, creatine itself also has an important metabolic role, creatine metabolism. Maintaining creatine homeostasis is crucial for proper biological and physiological conditions. Hence, the contribution of creatine to immunity is worth further study. Peng and Saito et al. demonstrated that creatine increased intracellular ATP levels, regulated immunological activities of macrophages, and strengthened CD8+ T cell-based anti-tumor immunity. In addition, creatine can enhance immunity by modulating macrophages, which also helps to sort out the relationship between immunological function and metabolic characteristics. In addition to the above, the immunomodulation and escape mechanisms in tumors, as well as the anti-tumor immunomodulatory activities of some representative active ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine were reviewed and discussed by Yang et al. Additionally, a heat shock protein heat-shock-protein family A (Hsp70) member 5 (HSPA5) was reviewed by Li et al. to explore its therapeutic and prognostic significance and prospect in cancers, indicating the significance in cancer treatment by targeting HSPA5 expression via natural products in the future.

In summary, these inspiring studies will help elucidating the role of immunometabolism of natural products, and promote novel drug discovery from natural products.

Author contributions

WT: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. DY: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. ZZ: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft.

Funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported by the Gansu Province Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (20JR10RA650), and the Outstanding Youth of the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (lzujbky-2021-ey21). This study was also supported by the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT 001/2023/ALC 0123/2022/A, and 0006/2020/AKP), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China (2020A1515010922), Traditional Chinese Medicine Bureau of Guangdong Province, China (20201183), Shenzhen–Hong Kong-Macau S&T Program (Category C) (SGDX2020110309420200), and Research Fund of the University of Macau (MYRG-GRG2023-00198-ICMS, CPG2023-00028-ICMS and SRG2022-00052-ICMS).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Keywords: immunometabolism, natural products, cancer, inflammation, traditional chinese medicine

Citation: Tan W, Yang D-H and Zhong Z (2023) Editorial: Immunometabolic response of natural products in inflammation and cancer. Front. Immunol. 14:1335510. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1335510

Received: 09 November 2023; Accepted: 10 November 2023;
Published: 17 November 2023.

Edited and Reviewed by:

Willem Van Eden, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Copyright © 2023 Tan, Yang and Zhong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Wen Tan, tanwen@lzu.edu.cn; Dong-Hua Yang, dong-hua.yang@nyctcm.edu; Zhangfeng Zhong, zfzhong@um.edu.mo

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.