ABSTRACT
Radix Astragali (RA), a traditional Chinese medicine from the dried root of Astragalus species, is widely distributed throughout the temperate regions of the world. The major bioactive constituents of RA are triterpene glycosides, flavonoids, saponins, and alkaloids, and these compounds mostly exert pharmacological activities on the cardiovascular, immune, respiratory, and hepatic systems. This review summarizes the recent studies on RA and provides a comprehensive summary regarding the status of resources, ethnopharmacology, phytochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, clinical application, and patent release of RA. We hope this review can provide a guidance for further development of therapeutic agents from RA.
ABSTRACT
Salmonella is a gram-negative bacterium that has an ability of tumor-targeting growth and proliferation. Attenuated Salmonella VNP20009 is a virulence genes-knockout bacterial strain based on Salmonella typhimurium, and it has an advantage of good therapeutic effect and low toxicity. One of the mechanisms of anti-tumor effect of VNP20009 is the induction of inflammatory reaction within tumor tissues. We used B16F10 melanoma model to investigate the mechanism of the anti-tumor effect of VNP20009. VNP20009 treatment effectively inhibited tumor growth and promoted the apoptosis and necrosis of tumor cells. VNP20009 increased the accumulation or infiltration of CD8+ T cells and CD11b+ monocytes within tumor tissue by raising the level of immune response and thus, induce the production of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) to kill tumor cells by breaking the immuno-evasion barrier in the tumor microenvironment.
ABSTRACT
Objective To analyze the clinicopathologic data and operative parameters of 209 elderly co-lon cancer patients treated by radical resection between January 2002 and December 2011 ,and to investigate the factors related to recurrence and metastasis after colon cancer radical resection in elderly patients .Methods We used univariate and multivariate analysis of Cox regression ,including 14 variables:age,gender,disease duration, hospitalization duration,surgeon experience,operation duration,laparoscopicsurgery,tumor location,tumor size, gross morphology ,differentiate degree ,depth of bowel wall invasion ,lymph node involvement and obstruction .The survival curve was obtained by Kaplan -Meier method.Results Univariate analysis showed that tumor size (RR=2.658,P<0.0001),gross morphology(Infiltrating type,RR=3.407,P=0.0054),degree of differentiation (RR=0.32,P<0.0001) were associated with tumor relapse and metastasis .Multivariate analysis showed that gender(RR=0.585,P=0.0359),tumor size(RR=2.364,P<0.0001),degree of differentiation (Infiltrating type,RR=0.246,P=0.0437),gross morphology(RR=0.31,P<0.0001)were the significant factors.Conclu-sion Gender,tumor size,degree of differentiation,gross morphology were the independent factors of recurrence and metastasis of colon cancer after radical resection in elderly patients .Targeted follow -up for high -risk groups will improve patients′life quality and prolong their survival time .
ABSTRACT
To construct the cDNA expression library from human U937 cell, total RNA and purified mRNA in myeloid leukemia cell line U937 were extracted. The first and second strand of cDNA were synthesized through reverse transcription. After blunting the cDNA termini, the cDNA fragments were connected with EcoR I adapters, and the end of EcoR I adapters was phosphorylated. Then the cDNAs were digested by Xho I, and the fragments smaller than 400 bp were removed by Sephacryl-S400 spin column, the fragments longer than 400 bp were ligated with lambdaZAP vector. The recombinants were packaged in vitro, and a small portion of packaged phage was used to infect E coli XL1-Blue-MRF' for titration. The recombinants were examined by color selection. In order to evaluate the size of cDNA inserts and the diversity of library, the pBK-CMV phagemid was excised from the ZAP expression vector by using ExAssist helper phage with XLOLR strain, and then the pBK-CMV phagemid was digested by Xho I and EcoR I. The results showed that the U937 cell line cDNA library consisting of 2.87 x 10(6) recombinant bacteriophages was constructed. The average size of exogenous insert in the recombinants was about 1.7 kb. It is concluded that the constructed cDNA library can be used to screen target clones.