d-Amino Acid Position Influences the Anticancer Activity of Galaxamide Analogs: An Apoptotic Mechanism Study.

Galaxamide, an extract from Galaxaura filamentosa, is a cyclic pentapeptide containing five l-leucines. Due to the particular cyclic structure and the excellent anticancer activity, synthesis of Galaxamide and its analogs and their subsequent bio-applications have attracted great attention. In the present work, we synthesized six Galaxamide analogs by replacing one of the l-leucines with phenylalanine and varying the d-amino acid position. The anticancer effect of the synthesized Galaxamide analogs was tested against four in vitro human cancer cell lines, human hepatocellular cells (HepG2), human breast cancer cell (MCF-7), human breast adenocarcinoma cells (MDA-MB-435) and a human cervical carcinoma cell line (Hela). Results showed that Galaxamide analogs with different d-amino acid positions displayed distinct anticancer potential. The Galaxamide analog containing d-amino acid at position 5 (Analog-6) presented the strongest anticancer activity. The mechanism study revealed that Analog-6 could cause the early apoptosis of HepG2 cells by inhibiting their growth in the sub-G1 stage of the cell cycle and induce the chromatin condensation and fragmentation, which can be seen as 68% of HepG2 cells inhibited in the sub-G1 stage. Moreover, a mitochondria-mediated pathway was found to be involved in the apoptotic process of Analog-6 on HepG2 cells.

Cardioprotective Effects of Combined Therapy with Hyperbaric Oxygen and Diltiazem Pretreatment on Myocardial Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury in Rats.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: In this study, we examined whether the combination of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) and diltiazem therapy provided a cardioprotective effect on myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (MIRI) rat model. METHODS: Sixty healthy Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into sham, IR, diltiazem (5 mg/kg), HBO (0.25 MPa, 60 min) and combination therapy (HBO plus diltiazem) groups. MIRI model was established by ligating the left anterior descending for 30 min, followed by 60 min of reperfusion. RESULTS: The results show that HBO and diltiazem preconditioning significantly improves cardiac function and myocardial infarction area, increases nitric oxide, endothelial nitric oxide synthase and ATPase (Na+-K+-ATPase and Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase) activity and decreases levels of oxygen stress, myocardial enzymes and endothelin-1. Notably, HBO and diltiazem preconditioning significantly increased Bcl-2 protein expression and decreased Bax protein and caspase-3 mRNA expression. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that combination therapy protected against heart MIRI by reducing oxygen stress damage, correcting energy metabolism, improving endothelial function and inhibiting cell apoptosis.

Synthesis, cytotoxicity and apoptosis induction in human tumor cells by galaxamide and its analogues [corrected].

Our previous study reported that galaxamide, which is a cyclo-pentapeptide containing five leucines that was extracted from Galaxaura filamentosa, displayed remarkable anticancer cytotoxicity. This novel cyclo-peptide provided a new skeleton for the structural modifications used in finding new drugs with better anticancer properties. In this study, five analogues were synthesized based on changing the number of d/l amino acids by adding a new amino acid, phenylalanine. Galaxamide and five of its analogues were evaluated through MTT assays to examine their cytotoxic activities. We found that modified analogue 5, which is referred to as A5, displayed broad spectrum cytotoxic activity toward every cell line tested; in addition, the IC50 of A5 was lower than that of galaxamide and the other analogues. Furthermore, we used flow cytometry and western blot assays to investigate whether galaxamide and A5 could induce cancer cell apoptosis. The flow cytometric studies showed that HepG2 cells treated with different concentrations of galaxamide or A5 over 72 h displayed significant and dose-dependent increases in the percentages of early-stage apoptotic cells. Western blotting revealed that both compounds induce caspase-dependent apoptosis in HepG2 cells through a mitochondria-mediated pathway. The results demonstrate that galaxamide and its analogues have potential applications as clinical anticancer drugs.

Five new flavonoid glycosides from Nervilia fordii.

Five new flavonoid glycosides, namely nervilifordins F-J (1-5), were isolated from the 60% EtOH extract of the aerial parts of Nervilia fordii, along with three first isolated flavonoids (7, 8, and 13) and five known flavonoids (6, 9-12). The structures of new compounds were elucidated on the basis of 1D and 2D NMR and MS studies. Their anti-inflammatory activities were tested by measuring their inhibitory effects on nitric oxide production in lipopolysaccharide-activated RAW264.7 macrophages. Compounds 2 and 5 showed interesting inhibition effects with their EC50 values of 15.15 µM and 14.80 µM, respectively.