Fabrication and characterization of a chitosan/cyclodextrin/TiO2-NPs composite for preservation of avocados.

In this study, a TiO2 material with nanoparticle size of about 10-20 nm, surface area of 109 m2 g-1 was synthesized using the microwave-assisted hydrothermal method. The chitosan/TiO2 film combined with cyclodextrin (chitosan-cyclodextrin/TiO2, CS-CD/TiO2NPs) helps significantly improve the mechanical properties and enhance the antibacterial activity of the polymer film. Furthermore, the content of TiO2 nanoparticles in CS-CD/TiO2NPs also affects the tensile strength, antibacterial activity, ripening rate, ethylene production rate, and water vapor permeability during food preservation of the CS-CD film that has been studied. The CS-CD/TiO2NPs film is effective against Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli) and Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aereus) reaching over 99.5% after 15 min of contact. The preservation ability of avocados coated with CS-CD/TiO2NPs was evaluated through some physiological parameters of the avocados, such as sensory evaluation, weight loss, and hardness. The results show that the use of CS-CD/TiO2NPs films extends the preservation time of avocados up to 7 days under conditions of 30 °C and 80% relative humidity.

A Comparative Study on Characteristics and Antibacterial Capacity of Cotton Fabrics Dyed with Reactive Dye and Diospyros Mollis Extract.

This article focuses on comparing the characteristics of cotton fabric dyed with Diospyros mollis extract (DME) solution and that of cotton fabric dyed with the reactive dye. The parameters of the cotton fabric after dyeing with both types of dyes were assessed, including color strength (K/S), structural morphology, infrared spectrum, antibacterial properties, UV resistance, color fastness to washing, rubbing, light, moisture absorption, breathability, and wastewater indices. The obtained results show that the K/S value of cotton fabric dyed with DME solution is slightly lower than that of cotton fabric dyed with the reactive dye, 18.52 and 19.36, respectively. The cotton fabric dyed with the reactive dye does not exhibit antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, whereas the antibacterial effectiveness against these bacteria for cotton fabric dyed with DME solution is 99.99 %. The UV protection capability of cotton fabric dyed with DME solution is superior to cotton fabric dyed with the reactive dye. The BOD/COD ratio of wastewater from the dyeing process with DME is higher than that of the reactive dye, with values of 0.70 and 0.32, respectively. The findings of this study indicate the superior ability of using DME solution as compared to the reactive dye, which is promising as a natural dye for fabric in medical applications.

Tailoring hierarchical structures in cellulose carbon aerogels from sugarcane bagasse using different crosslinking agents for enhancing electrochemical desalination capability.

Sugarcane bagasse is one of the most common Vietnamese agricultural waste, which possesses a large percentage of cellulose, making it an abundant and environmentally friendly source for the fabrication of cellulose carbon aerogel. Herein, waste sugarcane bagasse was used to synthesize cellulose aerogel using different crosslinking agents such as urea, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and sodium alginate (SA). The 3D porous network of cellulose aerogels was constructed by intermolecular hydrogen bonding, which was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and nitrogen adsorption/desorption. Among the three cellulose aerogel samples, cellulose - SA aerogel (SB-CA-SA) has low density of 0.04 g m-3 and high porosity of 97.38%, leading to high surface area of 497.9 m2 g-1 with 55.67% micropores of activated carbon aerogel (SB-ACCA-SA). The salt adsorption capacity was high (17.87 mg g-1), which can be further enhanced to 31.40 mg g-1 with the addition of CNT. Moreover, the desalination process using the SB-ACCA-SA-CNT electrode was stable even after 50 cycles. The results show the great combination of cellulose from waste sugarcane bagasse with sodium alginate and carbon nanotubes in the fabrication of carbon materials as the CDI-utilized electrodes with high desalination capability and good durability.

Oculo-facio-cardio-dental (OFCD) syndrome: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Oculo-facio-cardio-dental (OFCD) syndrome is a rare condition that affects the eyes, face, heart, and teeth of patients. One notable dental characteristic of OFCD is radiculomegaly, or root gigantism, which highlights the role of dentists in detecting this syndrome. OFCD is an X-linked dominant syndrome that results from a variant in the BCOR gene. Our study presents the first documented case of OFCD in Vietnam and reports a novel BCOR gene variant observed in this case. CASE PRESENTATION: A 19-year-old Vietnamese female patient with an extremely long root with an abscess was clinically examined for the expression of OFCDs. The radiograph and the variant in BCOR gene were also evaluated. We identified abnormalities in the teeth, as well as ocular, facial, and cardiac features, with radiculomegaly of the canines being a specific symptom for OFCDs. The patient's genetic analysis revealed a pathogenic heterozygous deletion at intron 11 of the BCOR gene, representing a novel variant. CONCLUSION: Oculo-facio-cardio-dental syndrome (OFCD) is an extremely rare condition characterized by abnormalities in the eyes, face, heart, and teeth, often caused by variants in the BCOR gene. Radiculomegaly, or enlarged dental roots, is a key diagnostic feature of OFCD, and early detection is crucial for preventing future dental complications.

Helicobacter pylori Eradication Rate Using Stool Antigen Test in Vietnamese Children: A Prospective Multicenter Study.

Objectives: This study assessed the diagnostic value of a monoclonal immunoassay stool antigen test (HpSA) for Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection and the eradication outcomes. Methods: Children undergoing digestive endoscopy at 2 Children's Hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City were recruited. Treatment was offered to H. pylori-infected children. Stool samples were collected on the same day as the endoscopy procedure and after 6 weeks post-treatment for HpSA. Diagnostic value and optimal cutoff of HpSA were assessed using biopsy-based tests as the gold standard. Eradication was defined as a negative HpSA post-treatment. Ethical approval was obtained, and informed consent was signed by the participants. Results: In total, 394 patients participated in the study. The most common symptoms were epigastric pain (74.6%) and vomiting (37.3%). H. pylori status was positive in 78% of patients (306/394), doubtful in 10.1%, and negative in 12.2%. HpSA was positive in 73.2% (142/194). Excluding doubtful infections, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy of HpSA were 87.4%, 95.2%, 99.2%, 51.3%, and 88.4%, respectively. The optimal cutoff value of 0.148 provided similar accuracy to the recommended cutoff. The eradication rate was 56.1% in per-protocol analysis and 27.9% in intention-to-treat analysis. Treatment success was higher in boys, but lower among malnourished children and those infected with cagA+ strains. Conclusions: The HpSA is reliable for identifying H. pylori infection in epidemiological studies and assessing eradication outcomes. The low eradication rate highlights the need for an appropriate intervention strategy in Vietnamese children.

Investigation on Methylene Blue Dye Adsorption in Aqueous by the Modified Mussel Shells: Optimization, Kinetic, Thermodynamic and Equilibrium Studies.

This study assessed the methylene blue adsorption using natural and modified mussel shell powders in the aqueous solution. The mussel shell samples were processed in a NaClO solution then modified with sodium dodecyl sulfate and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. The characteristics of mussel shell samples before and after modification were demonstrated using infared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, nitrogen adsorption/desorption, energy dispersive X-ray, water contact angle, and dynamic light scattering methods. Some factors such as the pH of the medium, adsorption temperature, and adsorption time had a significant effect on the methylene blue adsorption of mussel shell samples. The adsorption isotherm models and kinetics of methylene blue adsorption by mussel shell samples were also studied. A quadratic regression equation was selected with experimental planning following the Box-Behnken model combined with Design Expert 11.1.0.1 software to optimize the methylene blue adsorption process by mussel shell samples. These results open a promising direction for using naturally derived materials to remove organic pollutants from contaminated water.

'Most people have no idea what autism is': Unpacking autism disclosure using social media analysis.

LAY ABSTRACT: Autism disclosure - that is sharing their autism diagnosis or identity with a person or people - is a difficult decision for many autistic people. While telling people they are autistic can be positive and helpful, it can also create a lot of problems. What we have learnt is that disclosure is really complicated. Rather than asking research participants questions about what might happen, we looked at what people were saying on public social media posts (Reddit and Twitter) about what did happen. We used three years of posts that were related to autism disclosure from a wide range of adults (autistic and non-autistic). Four main ideas were created from our data, with the key finding being that society does not understand autism. This lack of understanding creates problems for autistic people in work, dating, healthcare and mental health. The remaining ideas were that autistic people should have privacy and be treated with respect, that autistic representation can help society and that non-autistic people need to do more to help autistic people. Our findings support that society needs to do more through autism advocacy, better media representation and more public role models. Increasing the accuracy of understanding of autism across society will mean that autistic people can feel safer to disclose if they want to.

Advances in long-acting slow effective release antiretroviral therapies for treatment and prevention of HIV infection.

Adherence to daily oral antiretroviral therapy (ART) is a barrier to both treatment and prevention of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. To overcome limitations of life-long daily regimen adherence, long-acting (LA) injectable antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, nanoformulations, implants, vaginal rings, microarray patches, and ultra-long-acting (ULA) prodrugs are now available or in development. These medicines enable persons who are or at risk for HIV infection to be treated with simplified ART regimens. First-generation LA cabotegravir, rilpivirine, and lenacapavir injectables and a dapivirine vaginal ring are now in use. However, each remains limited by existing dosing intervals, ease of administration, or difficulties in finding drug partners. ULA ART regimens provide an answer, but to date, such next-generation formulations remain in development. Establishing the niche will require affirmation of extended dosing, improved access, reduced injection volumes, improved pharmacokinetic profiles, selections of combination treatments, and synchronization of healthcare support. Based on such needs, this review highlights recent pharmacological advances and a future treatment perspective. While first-generation LA ARTs are available for HIV care, they remain far from ideal in meeting patient needs. ULA medicines, now in advanced preclinical development, may close gaps toward broader usage and treatment options.

Association of diabetes mellitus with early-onset colorectal cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 studies including 10 million individuals and 30,000 events.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Early-onset colorectal cancer (EoCRC) constitutes 2%-10% of all colorectal cancers and is becoming more common globally. Diabetes mellitus (DM) has increased substantially in younger adults; however, its involvement in EoCRC remains unclear. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies to (1) explore the prevalence of DM in individuals with EoCRC and (2) investigate the association between DM and EoCRC. METHODS: A systematic literature search was conducted to identify studies published before May 2022 that evaluated the association between DM and EoCRC risk in four databases, including Medline (PubMed), Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. Results from the studies were summarized in meta-analyses using random effects models. RESULTS: Nineteen eligible studies were included. A total of 33,359 EoCRC cases and 14,259,289 controls in 12 studies were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled odds ratio [OR] of 1.43 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.08-1.8) indicated significant positive association between DM and increased risk of EoCRC. Subgroup analysis demonstrated that diabetes severity was significantly associated with unmanaged DM (OR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.02-1.6), but not with managed DM (OR = 1.04, 95% CI: 0.84-1.28). CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that DM is a risk factor for EoCRC, and the higher prevalence of DM among younger adults may contribute to the increasing incidence of EoCRC. Interventions to reduce this bidirectional risk should be further investigated for the development of effective prevention and treatment strategies. PROSPERO registration: CRD42022306347.

Antibiotic resistance and heteroresistance in Helicobacter pylori isolates from symptomatic Vietnamese children: A prospective multicenter study.

BACKGROUND: Antibiotic resistance of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is increasing worldwide, with geographical variations, impacting the treatment outcomes. This study assessed the antibiotic resistance patterns of H. pylori in Vietnamese children. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Symptomatic children undergoing gastroduodenoscopy at two tertiary Children's Hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City were recruited. Antral and corpus biopsies were obtained and cultured separately. Susceptibility to amoxicillin (AMO), clarithromycin (CLA), metronidazole (MET), levofloxacin (LEV), and tetracycline (TET) was determined using E-test. Polymerase chain reaction was performed on another antral biopsy to detect the urease gene, cytotoxin-associated gene A (cagA), vacuolating cytotoxin A (vacA) genotypes, and 23S rRNA mutations conferring CLA resistance. RESULTS: Among 123 enrolled children, a high primary resistance rate was found for CLA (68.5%, 61/89), followed by LEV (55.1%), MET (31.5%), AMO (25.8%), and TET (1.1%). Secondary resistance rates were 82.1% (7/28), 71.4%, 53.6%, and 3.6% for CLA, LEV, MET, and TET, respectively. Multidrug resistance was frequent (67.7%), with common patterns including CLA + LEV (20.3%) and CLA + MTZ + LEV (15.2%). Heteroresistance was detected in eight children (6.5%). The A2143G mutation was detected in 97.5% (119/122) of children. 86.1% of children had positive cagA strains and 27.9% had multiple vacA genotypes. No factor was significantly associated with antibiotic resistance. CONCLUSIONS: The alarming rate of antibiotic resistance for H. pylori, especially for CLA, with emerging multi- and hetero-resistant strains, pose a major treatment challenge that precludes CLA use as empirical therapy. Biopsies from both antrum and corpus can improve H. pylori culture, allowing tailored treatment based on antimicrobial susceptibility.

Fairness and Accuracy Under Domain Generalization.

As machine learning (ML) algorithms are increasingly used in high-stakes applications, concerns have arisen that they may be biased against certain social groups. Although many approaches have been proposed to make ML models fair, they typically rely on the assumption that data distributions in training and deployment are identical. Unfortunately, this is commonly violated in practice and a model that is fair during training may lead to an unexpected outcome during its deployment. Although the problem of designing robust ML models under dataset shifts has been widely studied, most existing works focus only on the transfer of accuracy. In this paper, we study the transfer of both fairness and accuracy under domain generalization where the data at test time may be sampled from never-before-seen domains. We first develop theoretical bounds on the unfairness and expected loss at deployment, and then derive sufficient conditions under which fairness and accuracy can be perfectly transferred via invariant representation learning. Guided by this, we design a learning algorithm such that fair ML models learned with training data still have high fairness and accuracy when deployment environments change. Experiments on real-world data validate the proposed algorithm. Model implementation is available at https://github.com/pth1993/FATDM.

Helicobacter pylori Infection and Peptic Ulcer Disease in Symptomatic Children in Southern Vietnam: A Prospective Multicenter Study.

BACKGROUND: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) remains a major cause of gastroduodenal diseases. We aimed to evaluate the burden of this infection, particularly peptic ulcer disease in Vietnamese children. METHODS: We enrolled consecutive children referred for esophagogastroduodenoscopy at two tertiary children's hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City, from October 2019 to May 2021. Children treated with proton pump inhibitors during the last two weeks or antibiotics for four weeks, and those having a previous or interventional endoscopy were excluded. H. pylori infection was diagnosed with either a positive culture or positive histopathology combined with a rapid urease test, or with a polymerase chain reaction of the urease gene. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee and written informed consent/assent was obtained. RESULTS: Among 336 enrolled children aged 4-16 (mean: 9.1 ± 2.4 years; 55.4% girls), H. pylori infection was positive in 80%. Peptic ulcers were detected in 65 (19%), increasing with age, and 25% with anemia. cagA+ strains were detected at a higher rate in children with ulcers. CONCLUSIONS: Prevalence of H. pylori and peptic ulcers is high among symptomatic Vietnamese children. It is crucial to have a program for early detection of H. pylori to reduce ulcer risk and gastric cancer later.

Factors Associated With Helicobacter Pylori Infection Among School-Aged Children From a High Prevalence Area in Vietnam.

Objectives: The study aimed to identify prevalence of H. pylori infection and associated risk factors among pupils of Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC). Methods: A total of 1,476 pupils aged 6-15 years were enrolled in this cross-sectional study using multiple-stage sampling method. Infection status was assessed using stool antigen-test. A questionnaire was used to obtain socio-demographic, behavioral, and environmental factors. Logistic regression was performed to assess possible factors related to the infection. Results: Of the 1,409 children included in the analysis, 49.2% were male and 95.8% were of Kinh ethnicity. About 43.5% of parents completed college or university. The overall prevalence of H. pylori was 87.7%. Infrequency of handwashing with soap after toilet, the use of only water to clean after toilet, crowded living areas, larger family size, and younger age were independently contributing to an increased prevalence of H. pylori. Conclusion: H. pylori infection is highly prevalent in HCMC, and is associated with poor hygienic practices, crowded living areas, larger family size, and younger age. These findings highlight the importance of fecal-oral route and the attribution of crowded living conditions to the spreading of H. pylori in HCMC. Therefore, preventive programs should be set up with a focus on education of hygiene practices, and oriented to those living in crowded conditions.

A fair and interpretable network for clinical risk prediction: a regularized multi-view multi-task learning approach.

In healthcare domain, complication risk profiling which can be seen as multiple clinical risk prediction tasks is challenging due to the complex interaction between heterogeneous clinical entities. With the availability of real-world data, many deep learning methods are proposed for complication risk profiling. However, the existing methods face three open challenges. First, they leverage clinical data from a single view and then lead to suboptimal models. Second, most existing methods lack an effective mechanism to interpret predictions. Third, models learned from clinical data may have inherent pre-existing biases and exhibit discrimination against certain social groups. We then propose a multi-view multi-task network (MuViTaNet) to tackle these issues. MuViTaNet complements patient representation by using a multi-view encoder to exploit more information. Moreover, it uses a multi-task learning to generate more generalized representations using both labeled and unlabeled datasets. Last, a fairness variant (F-MuViTaNet) is proposed to mitigate the unfairness issues and promote healthcare equity. The experiments show that MuViTaNet outperforms existing methods for cardiac complication profiling. Its architecture also provides an effective mechanism for interpreting the predictions, which helps clinicians discover the underlying mechanism triggering the complication onsets. F-MuViTaNet can also effectively mitigate the unfairness with only negligible impact on accuracy.

Hedyocoronins A and B: two new oleanane saponins from the aerial parts of Hedyotis coronaria.

Two new oleanane saponins, hedyocoronin A (1) and hedyocoronin B (2), were isolated from the aerial parts of Hedyotis coronaria (Kurz) Craib, Rubiaceae, collected at Da Oai district, Lam Dong province in Vietnam. Their chemical structures were elucidated by HR-MS, 1D and 2D-NMR spectra, along with the comparison with those reported in the literature. Compounds 1 and 2 showed weak cytotoxicity against KB and HeLa-S3 cancer cell lines with IC50 values of more than 54 µM.

High Prevalence of Helicobacter pylori Infection Among School-Aged Children in Ho Chi Minh City, VietNam.

Objectives: There is no study on Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection in pupils of Ho Chi Minh city (HCMC), the most overcrowded city in Vietnam. Therefore, the aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of H. pylori and its geographical spread among school-aged children. Methods: A school-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 1854 pupils across 24 districts of HCMC in 2019. Multiple-stage sampling method was used to enroll pupils. We built a four-points index for geographical division based on population density and employees density to evaluate the link between H. pylori and crowded level. Stool samples were analyzed by monoclonal enzyme-immunoassay stool antigen-test to assess the infection status. Logistic regression was performed to assess possible factors related to H. pylori infection. Results: The overall prevalence of H. pylori was 87.7%. There was a linear increasing trend in the infection rate (p < 0.001) across the 4-points index of HCMC and this trend maintained within both age and gender subgroups (p = 0.02). Conclusion: Prevalence of H. pylori was high and it increased with population density or employees density. Therefore, it is crucial to plan and implement the reduction of H. pylori infection programs by targeting the highly concentrated population areas of HCMC.

Synthesis and Characterization of Polypyrrole Film Doped with Both Molybdate and Salicylate and Its Application in the Corrosion Protection for Low Carbon Steel.

Polypyrrole (PPy) films doped with molybdate and salicylate have been successfully electropolymerized on low carbon steel in aqueous solutions containing both molybdate and salicylate in a one-step process that did not require any pre-treatment of the steel substrate. Salicylate-doped PPy films were synthesized in the same way for comparison. The steel surface was rapidly inhibited and the PPy-based films were formed on it easily. The PPy-based films were characterized by Fourier transform infrared, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray, and thermal gravimetric analysis methods. The corrosion protection performance of the coatings was investigated with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, open circuit potential (OCP), salt spray test, and Tafel polarization. It was found that in the presence of both molybdate and salicylate as dopants, the films on steel could present a better corrosion resistance than PPy film doped with only salicylate. The self-healing property of PPy-based films was observed on the OCP measurement with the fluctuation of rest potential. The salt spray test results showed that the PPy film doped with both salicylate and molybdate was more salt-resistant than the PPy film doped with only salicylate. The results suggest that the PPy coatings doped with both molybdate and salicylate are potential for application as metallic anti-corrosion coatings.

FAME: Fragment-based Conditional Molecular Generation for Phenotypic Drug Discovery.

De novo molecular design is a key challenge in drug discovery due to the complexity of chemical space. With the availability of molecular datasets and advances in machine learning, many deep generative models are proposed for generating novel molecules with desired properties. However, most of the existing models focus only on molecular distribution learning and target-based molecular design, thereby hindering their potentials in real-world applications. In drug discovery, phenotypic molecular design has advantages over target-based molecular design, especially in first-in-class drug discovery. In this work, we propose the first deep graph generative model (FAME) targeting phenotypic molecular design, in particular gene expression-based molecular design. FAME leverages a conditional variational autoencoder framework to learn the conditional distribution generating molecules from gene expression profiles. However, this distribution is difficult to learn due to the complexity of the molecular space and the noisy phenomenon in gene expression data. To tackle these issues, a gene expression denoising (GED) model that employs contrastive objective function is first proposed to reduce noise from gene expression data. FAME is then designed to treat molecules as the sequences of fragments and learn to generate these fragments in autoregressive manner. By leveraging this fragment-based generation strategy and the denoised gene expression profiles, FAME can generate novel molecules with a high validity rate and desired biological activity. The experimental results show that FAME outperforms existing methods including both SMILES-based and graph-based deep generative models for phenotypic molecular design. Furthermore, the effective mechanism for reducing noise in gene expression data proposed in our study can be applied to omics data modeling in general for facilitating phenotypic drug discovery.

Chemical-induced gene expression ranking and its application to pancreatic cancer drug repurposing.

Chemical-induced gene expression profiles provide critical information of chemicals in a biological system, thus offering new opportunities for drug discovery. Despite their success, large-scale analysis leveraging gene expressions is limited by time and cost. Although several methods for predicting gene expressions were proposed, they only focused on imputation and classification settings, which have limited applications to real-world scenarios of drug discovery. Therefore, a chemical-induced gene expression ranking (CIGER) framework is proposed to target a more realistic but more challenging setting in which overall rankings in gene expression profiles induced by de novo chemicals are predicted. The experimental results show that CIGER significantly outperforms existing methods in both ranking and classification metrics. Furthermore, a drug screening pipeline based on CIGER is proposed to identify potential treatments of drug-resistant pancreatic cancer. Our predictions have been validated by experiments, thereby showing the effectiveness of CIGER for phenotypic compound screening of precision medicine.

Sweet Wormwood and Tortoise Shell Decoction (Thanh Hao Miet Giap Thang) Induces DNA Damage, S-Phase Arrest, and Apoptosis in MCF-7 Cells via ATR-CHK1 Signaling Pathway.

Introduction: Sweet wormwood and tortoise shell decoction, Thanh Hao Miet Giap Thang (THMGT) in Vietnamese, a traditional formula composed of five ingredients, is used in complementary care in Vietnam for patients who underwent conventional cancer treatment. To expand the clinical use and explore novel functions of THMGT, this study was conducted to investigate the effect of THMGT in terms of antiproliferative activity and selective cytotoxicity toward human breast cancer cells MCF-7. Methods: Cytotoxicity of THMGT against human breast cancer cells MCF-7 and primary fibroblasts from a heathy donor were studied using sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay. Flow cytometry analysis, immunofluorescence, and western blotting were also performed to elucidate underlying mechanisms of THMGT action. Results: The SRB assay on treated MCF-7 cells and primary fibroblasts from a heathy donor indicated selective cytotoxicity of THMGT with a selective index of 3.92. Annexin V/PI staining and flow cytometric analysis on stained MCF-7 cells showed that the THMGT-treated cells were arrested at the S phase and subsequently underwent apoptosis. Western blot analysis showed an upregulation of γ-H2AX, increased protein levels of phosphorylated CHK1, TP53, and phosphorylated TP53 in a time-dependent manner, and a downregulated expression of ATR and MDM2. Conclusion: These results suggested DNA damaging effect and ATR-CHK1-mediated cell cycle arrest of THMGT on MCF-7 cells resulting in apoptosis induction.