Determinants of Prakriti, the Human Constitution Types of Indian Traditional Medicine and its Correlation with Contemporary Science.

Background: Constitutional type of an individual or prakriti is the basic clinical denominator in Ayurveda, which defines physical, physiological, and psychological traits of an individual and is the template for individualized diet, lifestyle counseling, and treatment. The large number of phenotype description by prakriti determination is based on the knowledge and experience of the assessor, and hence subject to inherent variations and interpretations. Objective: In this study we have attempted to relate dominant prakriti attribute to body mass index (BMI) of individuals by assessing an acceptable tool to provide the quantitative measure to the currently qualitative ayurvedic prakriti determination. Materials and Methods: The study is cross sectional, multicentered, and prakriti assessment of a total of 3416 subjects was undertaken. Healthy male, nonsmoking, nonalcoholic volunteers between the age group of 20-30 were screened for their prakriti after obtaining written consent to participate in the study. The prakriti was determined on the phenotype description of ayurvedic texts and simultaneously by the use of a computer‑aided prakriti assessment tool. Kappa statistical analysis was employed to validate the prakriti assessment and Chi‑square, Cramer’s V test to determine the relatedness in the dominant prakriti to various attributes. Results: We found 80% concordance between ayurvedic physician and software in predicting the prakriti of an individual. The kappa value of 0.77 showed moderate agreement in prakriti assessment. We observed a significant correlations of dominant prakriti to place of birth and BMI with Chi‑square, P < 0.01 (Cramer’s V‑value of 0.156 and 0.368, respectively). Conclusion: The present study attempts to integrate knowledge of traditional ayurvedic concepts with the contemporary science. We have demonstrated analysis of prakriti classification and its association with BMI and place of birth with the implications to one of the ways for human classification.

Growth inhibitory, apoptotic and anti-inflammatory activities displayed by a novel modified triterpenoid, cyano enone of methyl boswellates.

Triterpenoids are pentacyclic secondary metabolites present in many terrestrial plants. Natural triterpenoids have been reported to exhibit anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogenic activities. Here, we show that modifications of ring A of boswellic acid (2 cyano, 3 enone) resulted in a highly active growth inhibitory, anti-inflammatory, prodifferentiative and anti-tumour triterpenoid compound called cyano enone of methyl boswellates (CEMB). This compound showed cytotoxic activity on a number of cancer cell lines with IC50 ranging from 0.2 to 0.6 μM. CEMB inhibits DNA synthesis and induces apoptosis in A549 cell line at 0.25 μM and 1 μM concentrations, respectively. CEMB induces adipogenic differentiation in 3T3-L1 cells at a concentration of 0.1 μM. Finally, administration of CEMB intra-tumourally significantly inhibited the growth of C6 glioma tumour xenograft in immuno-compromised mice. Collectively, these results suggest that CEMB is a very potent anti-tumour compound.

Changes in gene expression following androgen receptor blockade is not equivalent to androgen ablation by castration in the rat ventral prostate.

Involution of the rat ventral prostate and concomitant modulation of gene expression post-castration is a well- documented phenomenon. While the rat castration model has been extensively used to study androgen regulation of gene expression in the ventral prostate,it is not clear whether all the gene expression changes post-castration are due to androgen depletion alone. To obtain insights into this, we performed differential display reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (DD-RT-PCR) which resulted in the identification of castration and/or flutamide-regulated genes in the rat ventral prostate. These include clusterin, methionine adenosyl transferase II alpha, and prostate-specific transcripts such as PBPC1BS, S100RVP and A7. While clusterin, PBPC1BS and methionine adenosyl transferase II alpha are regulated by both castration and flutamide, S100 RVP and A7 are regulated by castration alone. Interestingly, we show that flutamide, unlike castration, does not induce apoptosis in the rat ventral prostate epithelium, which could be an underlying cause for the differential effects of castration and flutamide treatment. We propose that castration leads to enrichment and depletion of stromal and epithelial cell types, respectively, resulting in erroneous conclusions on some of the cell type-specific transcripts as being androgen regulated.

Recombinant expression of human transforming growth factor-ß isoforms in Chinese hamster ovary cells. combinant expression of human transforming growth factor-ß isoforms in Chinese hamster ovary cell.

Transforming growth factor-ps (TGF-ps) are multi functional growth modulators implicated in several physiological processes which include embryogenesis, inflammation, immune-suppression, wound healing, carcinogenesis and cellular differentiation. For clinical use, recombinant expression of TGF-ps is the only practical source because of very low yields from natural sources. Here, we report the recombinant expression of human TGF-pl and TGF-p2 in a mammalian expression system using a high expression eukaryotic vector driven by a cytomegalovirus promoter. Expression levels are as high as 0.97 flg/ml of TGF-pl and 0.24 flg/ml of TGF-p2 in conditioned media, sufficient for purification without the need for amplification of the gene using methotrexate.