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Gastrodin is extracted from the dry root of the orchid plant, Gastrodia elata. The source of raw materials is Yunnan Province. Traditional Chinese medicine Gastrodia elata (Gastrodia elata Bl.) is also known as Chi Jian, Ding Feng Cao, Shui Yang Yu, and so on, belonging to special symbiosis perennial herb of Orchidaceae and Armillaria mellea. The medicinal part is its tubers. It has sweet flavor and liver channel tropism and is neutral in nature. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that its main functions are to expel wind and relieve convulsion, calm the liver and suppress liver-yang, and expel wind evil and channel. There are 23 chemical ingredients extracted from Gastrodia elata, including gastrodin, gastrodia glycosides, vanilla alcohol, vanilla aldehyde, beta steroid valley alcohol, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, carrot glycosides, and so on, among which the highest content of single active ingredient is Gastrodia glycosides, namely, gastrodin

White solid

Appearance: white prismatic crystal, odorless, and bitter; little hygroscopicity. Solubility: soluble in water, methanol, ethanol, acetone, and acetonyl acetate, insoluble in chloroform, and poorly soluble in ethyl ether. Melting point: ?153 to 156?°C. Specific optical rotation: ?68 to ?72° .

It has been more than 30?years since the chemical composition of Gastrodia elata was analyzed. It includes phenols, organic acids, sterols, and so on. At present, the studies of the composition of Gastrodia elata focus on the fingerprint, but the studies of gastrodin were centered on the activity. The studies showed that gastrodin has many pharmacological effects with safety and few side effects; moreover, it is not easy to accumulate in the body. Based on traditional medicinal experience of Gastrodia elata, gastrodin has been developed as a medicine for the treatment of insomnia, headaches, and other symptoms related to the functions and indications of Gastrodia elata. At present, many pharmaceutical factories in China have produced active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and general preparation of gastrodin, such as Gastrodia tablet, Gastrodia capsule, and Gastrodia injection. To reduce the frequency of administration, the fluctuations of blood drug concentration, as well as side effects, some new dosage forms have been developed in recent years, such as Gastrodia dispersible tablets, Gastrodia sustained-release tablet, sustained-release pellets and osmotic pump tablets, etc. . Although gastrodin has been applied clinically, a lot of studies still need to be done to confirm the pharmacological effects of gastrodin. Recent studies found that other compositions of Gastrodia elata also showed rather excellent biological activity, suggesting that the study of Gastrodia elata and gastrodin needs further investigation.

Gastrodin up regulates heme oxygenase-1 expression through activation of p38 MAPK/Nrf2 signaling pathway thus protecting the SH-SY5Y cells from MPP+-induced oxidative cell death.

ChEBI: Gastrodin is a glycoside.

Gastrodin is included in the International Pharmacopoeia (5th ed.). The dosage forms include injections, tablets, and capsules. They are widely used for the treatment of vertigo (Meniere’s disease, medicinal dizziness, traumatic vertigo, sudden deafness, vestibular neuronitis, vertebrobasilar insufficiency, etc.), headache (vascular headache, migraine, etc.), neuralgia (trigeminal neuralgia, sciatica, etc.), neurasthenia syndrome, and brain traumatic syndrome .

Gastrodin has the pharmacological effects of hypnosis, sedation, and anticonvulsive. The pentobarbital sodium-induced sleep time test and sodium barbital-induced sleep onset latency test demonstrated that gastrodin can prolong the sleeping time and shorten the sleep onset latency in mouse, suggesting that gastrodin has the sedative and hypnotic effects .
Gastrodin also has antiepileptic effect. It suggested that gastrodin may inhibit the hippocampal excitatory neurotransmitter receptors of amino acid glutamate, activate hippocampal inhibitory neurotransmitter receptor of GABA, reduce the excitability of the cerebral cortex, and thus attenuate the development of epilepsy to play a role of antiepileptic effect .
Additionally, research has shown that gastrodin has certain pharmacological effect on scavenging free radicals and inhibiting the central nerve cell apoptosis, etc., which may be related to antiaging and neural protection . According to the available references, the researches of pharmacology and clinical efficacy of gastrodin are very preliminary; more research evidences still need to confirm whether gastrodin is the active constituent of rhizoma gastrodiae.

Gastrodin has sedative and hypnotic, analgesia, and immune enhancement function and is used for the treatment of tension headache to relieve pain and intense sentiment and thus further relieve the related symptoms . Clinical usage of gastrodin acupoint injection to treat insomnia also achieves certain effect . Moreover, gastrodin agents have been used for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases and microcirculation system, such as hypertension and coronary heart disease without obvious side effects .
It is also reported that gastrodin can treat epilepsy, vascular dementia, deafness, tinnitus, herpes zoster, osteoarthritis, cognitive impairment, and so on but still needs further investigation.

Gastrodin is produced via microbial synthesis in engineered E. coli using glucose as a raw material, achieving a titer of 545 mg/L in 48 hours[1][3]. In Yarrowia lipolytica, the addition of 1 g/L 4-hydroxybenzyl alcohol to YPD medium yields 598.3 mg/L gastrodin[4]. Enzymatic conversion of 10 mM p-hydroxybenzyl alcohol and uridine diphosphate glucose yields 2.67 g/L gastrodin with a 94.34% conversion rate in 12 hours[2].

[1] Bai, Y., Yin, H., Bi, H., Zhuang, Y., Liu, T., & Ma, Y. (2016). De novo biosynthesis of Gastrodin in Escherichia coli. Metabolic Engineering, 35, 138–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymben.2016.01.002
[2] Xia, H., Zhang, Z., Ding, J., Jiang, K., & Xue, F. (2023). A Glycosyltransferase from Arabidopsis thaliana Enables the Efficient Enzymatic Synthesis of Gastrodin. Catalysis Letters, 154(4), 1558–1566. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-023-04406-y
[3] Dai, Y., Ban, W., & Yang, Z. (2024). Gastrodin, a Promising Natural Small Molecule for the Treatment of Central Nervous System Disorders, and Its Recent Progress in Synthesis, Pharmacology and Pharmacokinetics. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 25(17), 9540. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms25179540
[4] Gu, Y., Jiang, Y., Li, C., Zhu, J., Lu, X., Ge, J., Hu, M., Deng, J., Ma, J., Yang, Z., Sun, X., Xue, F., Du, G., Xu, P., & Huang, H. (2024). High titer production of gastrodin enabled by systematic refactoring of yeast genome and an antisense-transcriptional regulation toolkit. Metabolic Engineering, 82, 250–261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymben.2024.02.016