Allistatin: A potent yet uncharacterized therapeutic nugget in Allium sativum

Abstract

Major solutions to human health challenges are encrypted in nature's resources. Despite the focus of contemporary research on characterizing plant natural products and phytochemicals, a vast number of plants are yet to be discovered, or their products functionally characterized. Garlic is one of the most common traditional Chinese medicinal plants and a hub of over 200 diverse phytochemicals. Interestingly, allistatin is a phytochemical frequently mentioned alongside allicin in research articles on Garlic (Allium sativum) and has been reported to possess interesting therapeutic activities. However, there are no reports on the proper characterization of allistatin or any of its structural information available on public repositories or databases. Moreover, experimental evidence to back up the claims of its therapeutic bioactivities is not available in any accessible literature. All of these have hampered prospective studies with allistatin and possible discoveries of novel therapeutic activities. This review provides a piece of up-to-date information on allistatin and a hypothetical prediction of the nature of its structure from the sparsely available information. Available information on its bioactivities was also reviewed, although very sparse evidence on their mechanism of action. Finally, a pathway towards the complete characterization of allistatin was suggested as a future prospect.

Keywords

• Allistatin
• Allium sativum
• Allicin
• Garlicin
• Quercetin
• Cyanidin