A research published in Heterocyclic chemistry shed new light on the anti-inflammatory effects of substituted psoralen derivatives. Dr Timonen showed in collaboration with the Immunopharmacology Research group from the School of Medicine, University of Tampere that psoralens, a certain group of furocoumarins, exhibits anti-inflammatory properties against NO production and iNOS expression.
In the study, it was also shown that the mechanism of anti-inflammatory activity is dependent of the structure of a certain substituent in the psoralen scaffold. The size and shape of substituent in the position 4 of the psoralen scaffold affected the mechanism of anti-inflammatory activity. The article can be found from here.