Extraction of Amana edulis Induces Liver Cancer Apoptosis.

HCC is one of the fastest-rising causes of cancer-related death. Novel therapeutic approaches for treatment are warranted. The goal of this study is to find effective components from Chinese herbal medicines, which is an important alternative source of anticancer medicine. To this end, six different herbs were selected from various traditional literatures. Soxhlet extractor was used to distill the strong polar and weak polar components of each herb. The inhibitive effect of each component was determined using liver cancer cells BEL7404. From total of 12 extractions, it was found that the combined crude lysate of Amana edulis from water and ethanol system had the best efficacy. At the concentration of 0.1 mg/mL, this component has the highest inhibition rate up to 70%. To investigate the underlying molecular reasons, we observed that the component can significantly induce the liver cancer cells apoptosis and retard the cell reproduction at G2/M stage. Verification experiments showed that this component also has apparent inhibitive effects on other liver cancer cells, such as HepG2 and Huh7. On the other hand, it has less effectiveness on another cell line HepaRG, which retains many characteristics of primary human hepatocytes. The results suggested that there might be highly efficient antihepatoma ingredient in the water and ethanol extraction of Amana edulis. The pure substances remain to be isolated and further research on their targets is required.

An event-related brain potential study of children's conservation.

To investigate the relationship between cortical activation and conservation ability, 22 children were divided into two groups based on their performance on a standard Piagetian Conservation test. Visual evoked potentials were recorded while children performed a weight conservation task. A bilateral, frontal-distributed, broad late positive component at 900 ms differed between non-conserving and conserving children, with non-conservers having a larger amplitude. The significant interaction between conservation ability and hemisphere on the amplitude of this component suggests that inferior generators gradually move from central to right frontal-central while conservation level increases. The results indicate the existence of an ERP component that reflects weight conservation ability in children and a possible relationship between conservation ability and brain activation.