This technology provides a composition for preventing and treating sarcopenia and muscle atrophy, and promoting muscle growth, using apigenin-7-glucuronide—a flavonoid glycoside isolated from Ajuga multiflora—or its salts as a single active ingredient. It is formulated for use in pharmaceuticals, health functional foods, and animal feed, utilizing a single compound with a defined structure rather than a crude extract.
Muscle atrophy progresses when the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway is inhibited, leading to reduced muscle protein synthesis and increased degradation via the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. Causes include aging, physical inactivity, cachexia, and chronic disease, which result in muscle weakness, falls, and increased metabolic disease risk. While the potential of natural products to inhibit muscle atrophy has been reported, the specific effects of individual compounds from Ajuga multiflora on skeletal muscle cell differentiation and hypertrophy were previously unknown, hindering their use as standardized ingredients.
This technology leverages the ability of apigenin-7-glucuronide to increase the expression of mTOR, p70S6K, and MHC in myotubes, thereby promoting myotube hypertrophy and the formation of multinucleated myotubes. The compound can be isolated from Ajuga multiflora extracts, synthesized, or purchased commercially, allowing for flexible supply. It can be applied to individual health functional foods for sarcopenia, therapeutic candidates for drug- or nutrition-induced muscle atrophy, and feed additives for maintaining livestock muscle mass. As a single indicator component with quantifiable content, it reduces product quality variance and simplifies the acquisition of regulatory approval data.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT for the development of methods to identify compound combinations with equivalent efficacy representing the overall activity of natural products.
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