Looking for agonists of β2 adrenergic receptor from Fuzi and Chuanwu by virtual screening and dual-luciferase reporter assay.

More and more studies demonstrated that β2 adrenergic receptor (β2-AR) plays a crucial role for the treatment of heart failure. Chuanwu and Fuzi have been used over thousands of years in China for the treatment of heart failure. Considering the effects of these herbs are very similar to β2-AR agonists, we presume whether β2-AR agonists can be found from Fuzi and Chuanwu. Fuzi and Chuanwu decoction were used to receive the luciferase reporter activity assay to verify the hypothesis, and the result is positive and encouraging. For it is very difficult to get all of the monomer compounds of Fuzi and Chuanwu, virtual screening was used to find potential β2-AR agonists and a cell-based β2-AR agonist functional evaluation model, combined with a luciferase reporter assay system, was used to confirm the final result. In this research, 45 compounds were identified as β2-AR agonists, and four compounds were verified and the rest need further experiment.