New platinum and ruthenium complexes--the latest class of potential chemotherapeutic drugs--a review of recent developments in the field.

New Platinum and Ruthenium complexes display antitumour and antimetastatic potentials and lower host toxicities. This mini-review examines some the more recent developments in this field, and explores their interactions with biologically-relevant species. The article also refers to more recent work in the area of molybdenum and copper(II) chemistry.

The anti-cancer charm of flavonoids: a cup-of-tea will do!

Hormone-dependent cancers of the breast, prostate and colon have, in the past decade, become the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Billions of dollars have been, and still are being spent to study cancers like these, and, in the past three decades, thanks to work by thousands of dedicated scientists, tremendous advancements in the understanding and treatment of cancer have been made. Nevertheless, as there is no sure-fire cure for a variety of cancers to date, natural protection against cancer has been receiving a great deal of attention lately not only from cancer patients but, surprisingly, from physicians as well. Phytoestrogens, plant-derived secondary metabolites, are diphenolic substances with structural similarity to naturally-occurring human steroid hormones. Phytoestrogens are normally divided into three main classes: flavonoids, coumestans and lignans. Flavonoids are found in almost all plant families in the leaves, stems, roots, flowers and seeds of plants and are among the most popular anti-cancer candidates. Flavonoidic derivatives have a wide range of biological actions such as antibacterial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and antiallergic activities. Some of these benefits are explained by the potent antioxidant effects of flavonoids, which include metal chelation and free-radical scavenging activities. Patent applications regarding flavonoids range from protocols for extraction and purification from natural resources and the establishment of various biological activities for these extracts to novel methods for the production and isolation of flavonoids with known biological activities. This review will bring the reader up to date on the current knowledge and research available in the field of flavonoids and hormone-dependent cancers, and many of the submitted patents that exploit flavonoids.

Transcription Factor IIA tau is associated with undifferentiated cells and its gene expression is repressed in primary neurons at the chromatin level in vivo.

The levels of General Transcription Factor (TF) IIA were examined during mammalian brain development and in rat embryo fibroblasts and transformed cell lines. The large TFIIA subunit paralogues alphabeta and tau are largely produced in unsynchronized cell lines, yet only TFIIA alphabeta is observed in a number of differentiated tissue extracts. Steady-state protein levels of the TFIIA tau, alphabeta, and gamma subunits were significantly reduced when human embryonal (ec) and hepatic carcinoma cell lines were stimulated to differentiate with either all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) or sodium butyrate. ATRA-treated NT2-ec cells required replating to induce a neuronal phenotype and loss of detectable TFIIA tau and gamma proteins. High levels of TFIIA tau, alphabeta, and gamma and Sp factors were identified in extracts from human fetal and rat embryonic day-18 brains, but not in human and rat adult brain extracts. A high histone H3 Lys9/Lys4 methylation ratio was observed in the TFIIA tau promoter of primary hippocampal neurons from day-18 rat embryos, suggesting that repressive epigenetic marks of chromatin prevent TFIIA tau from being transcribed in neurons. We conclude that TFIIA tau is associated with undifferentiated cells during development, yet is down-regulated at the chromatin level upon cellular differentiation.