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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by a cascade of pathologic changes. A widely discussed theory indicates that amyloid β (Aβ) peptides are the causative agents of AD. Silibinin, a flavonoid derived from milk thistle, is well known for its hepato-protective activities and we have reported the neuroprotective effects of silibinin. In this study, we investigated the role of estrogen receptors (ERs) in silibinin's neuroprotective effect on Aβ1-42-injected rats. Results of Morris water maze and novel object-recognition tests demonstrated that silibinin significantly attenuated Aβ1-42-induced memory impairment. Silibinin attenuated ERs and PI3K-Akt pathways, as well as modulated mitogen-activated protein kinases in the hippocampus of Aβ1-42-injected rats. Taken together, silibinin is a potential candidate in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

The scaffold of 4-quinolylhydrazone was attached to dihydroartemisinin by the combination and bioisosterism principles to get a dihydroartemisinin derivative called L-A03. The previous study demonstrated that L-A03 inhibited cysteine protease falcipain-2 of Plasmodium falciparum. Our preliminary assay showed that this compound exhibited significant antitumor activity in some cancer cell lines. Besides, cytotoxicity was low against human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. These suggest that L-A03 could be used as a potent antitumor drug. This study indicated that L-A03 induced both apoptosis and autophagy in human breast cancer MCF-7 cells. L-A03 caused autophagy prior to the onset of apoptotic cell death. In the presence of chloroquine, an autophagic inhibitor, L-A03-induced apoptosis was attenuated, indicating that autophagy was indispensable for apoptosis induction. Nitric oxide generation blocked apoptotic cell death, but did not affect autophagy, suggesting that autophagy may take place in the upstream of nitric oxide generation. Moreover, autophagy decreased the generation of nitric oxide. This study provided a new insight on the mechanism of anti-tumor effect of L-A03.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease. Accumulating evidence suggests that inflammatory response, oxidative stress and autophagy are involved in amyloid β (Aβ)-induced memory deficits. Silibinin (silybin), a flavonoid derived from the herb milk thistle, is well known for its hepatoprotective activities. In this study, we investigated the neuroprotective effect of silibinin on Aβ25-35-injected rats. Results demonstrated that silibinin significantly attenuated Aβ25-35-induced memory deficits in Morris water maze and novel object-recognition tests. Silibinin exerted anxiolytic effect in Aβ25-35-injected rats as determined in elevated plus maze test. Silibinin attenuated the inflammatory responses, increased glutathione (GSH) levels and decreased malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, and upregulated autophagy levels in the Aβ25-35-injected rats. In conclusion, silibinin is a potential candidate for AD treatment because of its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and autophagy regulating activities.

The cullin proteins are a family of scaffolding proteins that associate with RING proteins and ubiquitin E3 ligases and mediate substrate-receptor bindings. Thus, cullin proteins regulate the specificity of ubiquitin targeting in the regulation of proteins involved in various cellular processes, including proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. There are seven cullin proteins that have been identified in eukaryotes: CUL1, CUL2, CUL3, CUL4A, CUL4B, CUL5, and CUL7/p53-associated parkin-like cytoplasmic protein. All of these proteins contain a conserved cullin homology domain that binds to RING box proteins. Cullin-RING ubiquitin ligase complexes are activated upon post-translational modification by neural precursor cell-expressed, developmentally downregulated protein 8. The aberrant expression of several cullin proteins has been implicated in many cancers though the significance in gastric cancer has been less well investigated. This review provides the first systematic discussion of the associations between all members of the cullin protein family and gastric cancer. Functional and regulatory mechanisms of cullin proteins in gastric carcinoma progression are also summarized along with a discussion concerning future research areas. Accumulating evidence suggests a critical role of cullin proteins in tumorigenesis, and a better understanding of the function of these individual cullin proteins and their targets will help identify potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

A new preparation method of Cu from CuO under hydrothermal conditions was investigated. Glucose was employed as reducing agent. Results showed that CuO can be reduced easily to Cu° with glucose as reductant at 220–250 °C with NaOH. The reaction conditions such as reaction time, reaction temperature, sodium hydroxide concentration and water filling played key roles in the purity of the products. The proposed method provides an efficient and green conversion of CuO into Cu° without an expensive and toxic reducing agent at low temperatures.