Mechanism of Shengjiang Powder in treating chronic tonsillitis in children based on network pharmacology and molecular docking / 中国中药杂志

Based on the network pharmacology and molecular docking method to explore the molecular mechanism of Shengjiang Powder in treating chronic tonsillitis in children. This research first based on the Traditional Chinese Medicine System Pharmacology(TCMSP) and the Bioinformatics Analysis Tools for Molecular Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine(BATMAN-TCM), the effective active ingredients of the drugs contained in Shengjiang Powder were screened out by the pharmacokinetic(ADME) parameters, the targets were predicted, and then chronic tonsillitis disease in children targets were obtained by GeneCards database. Afterwards, the target protein names were standardized by the Uniprot database. The drug targets were matched with the disease targets to obtain the potential therapeutic targets of Shengjiang Powder. Cytoscape 3.8.0 software was used to screen out and construct the network diagram of "drug-components-core targets-disease". DAVID database and R language were used to conduct the enrichment analysis of core action targets. Finally, AutoDock software was used to conduct molecular docking between drug components with a high network medium value and core action targets. According to the findings, after standardized treatment, a total of 79 active ingredients of Shengjiang Powder were obtained; it was predicted to get 1 261 potential targets, 268 potential targets for treatment of chronic tonsillitis in children, and 29 core targets; and 81 entries of GO enrichment were determined(P<0.05), including 63 biological processes, 7 cell components, 11 molecular function items, 24 KEGG pathway enrichment items(P<0.05), mainly including cell cycle, inflammatory factors, viral infection, immune regulation and other signaling pathways. The results of molecular docking showed that main active components in Shengjiang Powder had a stable binding activity with the core targets. This study revealed the mechanism of Shengjiang Powder in the treatment of chronic tonsillitis in children, mainly by resisting virus, inhibiting inflammation, regulating immunity and other means to play a synergistic effect, so as to provide a theoretical basis for rational clinical application.

Sorting and identification of cancer stem cells in human prostate cancer cell lines / 中华男科学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To sort and identify side population (SP) cancer stem cells (CSC) in human prostate cancer (PCa) cell lines.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Stem-like cells were isolated from five PCa cell lines Du145, IA8, LNCaP, TSU-Pr and PC-3 using FACS based on CD133+ CD44+ immunophenotype and SP in Hoechst staining. The in vitro growth pattern and tumorigenicity of SP stem cells were verified by soft agar colony-formation trial. LNCaP/SP cells were selected for further identification of stem cell properties using immunostaining, proliferation and invasion assay. Eventually, tumorigenicity and metastasis ability of LNCaP/SP were confirmed by xenograft experiments.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The percentages of CSCs of the CD133 CD44 + immunophenotype were extremely low in the five PCa cell lines. On the contrary, the percentages of the isolated SP cells were significantly higher in Du145 ([0.15 +/- 0.02]%), IA8 ([0.60 +/- 0.07 ]%), LNCaP ([0.8 +/- 0.1]%) and TSU-PrL ([2.0 +/- 0.4]%), but none was detected in PC-3. Besides, IA8/SP, LNCaP/SP and TSU-PrL/SP cells showed a significantly greater colony-forming efficiency than non-side population (NSP) cells (P < 0.05). Compared with LNCaP/NSP cells, LNCaP/SP cells exhibited high expressions of integrin alpha2, Nanog, CD44, OCT4 and ABCG2, remarkably enhanced invasive and proliferative potentials in vitro, and markedly increased tumorigenicity and metastasis (P < 0.01).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>SP sorting is more suitable than CD133+ CD44+ selection for enriching CSCs from PCa cell lines, and LNCaP/ SP represents a typical CSC population.</p>