Cloning of medicinal plants through tissue culture--a review.

In order to have standardized formulations, the chemical constituents from plants and their parts are required to be uniform both qualitatively and quantitatively. Furthermore, an ever increasing demand of uniform medicinal plants based medicines warrants their mass cloning through plant tissue culture strategy. A good number of medicinal plants have been reported to regenerate in vitro from their various parts, but a critical evaluation of such reports reveals that only a few complete medicinal plants have been regenerated and still fewer have actually been grown in soil, while their micropropagation on a mass scale has rarely been achieved, particularly in those medicinal plants where conventional propagation is inadequate, like, the mass clonal propagation of Dioscorea floribunda leading to its successful field trials. Such facts make it imperative to document the factual position of micropropagation of medicinal plants bringing out the advancements made along with the short falls, in this important area. The present review deals with the futuristic view on the said subject restricted to higher plants.

Elevated protein kinase C alpha expression may be predictive of tamoxifen treatment failure.

We previously reported that stable transfection of protein kinase C alpha (PKCalpha) into T47D human breast cancer cells results in tamoxifen (TAM)-resistant tumour growth. Relevance of PKCalpha expression in clinical specimens was determined by comparing PKCalpha expression in tumours from patients exhibiting disease recurrence with patients remaining disease-free following TAM treatment. Our results suggest that PKCalpha expression may predict TAM treatment failure.

Lack of expression of the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) gene products, EBERs, EBNA1, LMP1, and LMP2A, in breast cancer cells.

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a gamma herpesvirus, has been associated with a variety of human malignancies such as Burkitt's lymphoma, Hodgkin's lymphoma, NPC, and gastric cancer. A controversy regarding the association of EBV with breast cancers has recently been reported in the literature. These reports have mainly used the DNA detection techniques of polymerase chain reaction and Southern blot hybridization, with the inherent lacunae associated with these techniques for signal localization. Our group has studied EBV association with breast cancer by using in situ hybridization for detecting nonpolyadenylated EBV RNA (EBERs), along with using protein localization technique of immunohistochemistry, studying the EBV nuclear antigen 1 (EBNA1) and the latent membrane proteins (LMP1 and LMP2A). This is the first article analyzing the expression of LMP2A in breast cancer cells. In all of our 43 female breast cancer cases under study, we failed to detect expression of any of the EBV viral gene products tested.

Comparison of the absorption and metabolism of sulphasalazine and acrylic-coated 5-amino salicylic acid in normal subjects and patients with colitis.

Serum levels of 5-amino salicylic acid ( 5ASA ) and acetyl 5ASA have been measured in volunteers after ingestion of sulphasalazine (6 g) and compared with levels after an equivalent dose of acrylic coated 5ASA (2.4 g). The serum levels of both 5ASA and acetyl 5ASA were similar after each preparation apart from an early peak of 5ASA following acrylic coated 5ASA . Serum and urinary levels for 5ASA and acetyl 5ASA have been measured in colitic patients following equivalent doses of sulphasalazine and acrylic coated 5ASA . Serum levels were similar; 25% of the calculated ingested 5ASA was excreted in the urine after sulphasalazine compared with 20% following acrylic coated 5ASA .