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Ribonucleases represent a new class of antitumor RNA-damaging drugs. However, many wild-type members of the vertebrate secreted ribonuclease family are not cytotoxic because they are not able to evade the cytosolic ribonuclease inhibitor. We previously engineered the human pancreatic ribonuclease to direct it to the cell nucleus where the inhibitor is not present. The best characterized variant is PE5 that kills cancer cells through apoptosis mediated by the p21(WAF1/CIP1) induction and the inactivation of JNK. Here, we have used microarray-derived transcriptional profiling to identify PE5 regulated genes on the NCI/ADR-RES ovarian cancer cell line. RT-qPCR analyses have confirmed the expression microarray findings. The results show that PE5 cause pleiotropic effects. Among them, it is remarkable the down-regulation of multiple genes that code for enzymes involved in deregulated metabolic pathways in cancer cells.

Recombinant Newcastle disease virus (rNDV) as antitumor agent has been shown to be effective for cancer therapy. And TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) also has been demonstrated potentially cancer-therapeutic effects. In this study, we constructed TRAIL delivered by rNDV (rNDV-TRAIL) and investigated whether TRAIL would generate the potential synergistic therapeutic effects with rNDV for cancer therapy. In vitro experiments indicated that TRAIL expressed by rNDV demonstrated good biological activity. TRAIL significantly enhanced inducing apoptosis of rNDV in death receptor expression cancer cell lines. Experiments in malignant melanoma-bearing mice demonstrated that expression of TRAIL delivered by rNDV significantly inhibited the tumor growth and prolonged the survival of treated animals compared to control. In conclusion, oncolytic capacity of rNDV was augmented by TRAIL and the inherent anti-neoplastic properties of NDV were enhanced by the introduction of therapeutic TRAIL gene., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Doxorubicin (DOX) is an effective antitumor drug employed for treatment of a wide range of cancers types such as neuroblastoma, osteosarcoma, breast and esophageal carcinomas. On the other hand, the cumulative dose is restricted (300-550 mg/m(2)) and its amount administered to a patient has to be closely controlled due to its cardiotoxicity. To understand the mechanisms of the DOX side effects as well as to reveal the ways how to reduce its adverse impact on cardiomyocytes, the interactions with particular components of the blood and tissues have to be studied in greater detail. In this work, microdialysis technique was optimized to extract DOX from samples and subsequently monitor its interaction with BSA. Finally, the microdialysis probe was connected on-line to the LIF detector to ensure the real-time detection. The best flow rate was 1 μL/min and after 120 min of microdialysis 28% of the DOX was dialyzed out from the sample. The results from investigation of the DOX-BSA interaction indicate that the interaction occurs in less than 30 min, causing marked decrease in the amount of DOX extracted by microdialysis., (© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

The phthalimidone derivatives EM12 and lenalidomide, which are both structurally related to thalidomide, are highly interesting drugs and very recently lenalidomide attracted great attention as an antitumor and immune-modulating drug in the therapy for multiple myeloma. EM12 and lenalidomide are chiral, and the stereogenic carbon C-3 in the piperidine-2,6-dione moiety of these phthalimidone derivatives is prone to interconversion due to keto-enol tautomerization. The knowledge of the enantiomerization barrier is mandatory for pharmacokinetic studies and to develop a tailored therapy using the enantiopure or racemic drug. Here, we used dynamic EKC in combination with direct-calculation methods to determine the enantiomerization barriers of EM12 and lenalidomide. The separations of the enantiomers of EM12 and lenalidomide were performed in 50 mM aqueous disodium hydrogen phosphate buffer at pH 8 and 50 mM aqueous sodium tetraborate buffer at pH 9.3, respectively, using 20 mg/mL heptakis-(2,3-diacetyl-6-sulfato)-β-CD as a chiral additive. Enantiomerization of the compounds during the electrokinetic chromatographic separation resulted in pronounced plateau formation between the well-separated enantiomers. Peak form analysis of the experimentally obtained interconversion profiles yielded the enantiomerization rate constants k1 of EM12 and lenalidomide as well as the kinetic activation parameters ΔG(‡), ΔH(‡‡), and ΔS(‡) of enantiomerization by the evaluation of temperature-dependent measurements. The enantiomerization barrier ΔG(‡) was determined to be 98.3 ± 1.0 kJ/mol; the activation parameters ΔH(‡) = 46.1 ± 2.4 kJ/mol and ΔS(‡) = -170 ± 61 J/(K·mol) for EM12 and ΔG(‡) = 91.5 ± 1.0 kJ/mol, ΔH(‡) = 62.4 ± 5.4 kJ/mol, and ΔS(‡) = -98 ± 7 J/(K·mol) for lenalidomide. These findings were corroborated by density functional theory calculations at the B3LYP/3-21G level of theory of the ground state and intermediates considering an enantiomerization pathway via a keto-enol tautomerism., (© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Methyl dihydrojasmonate (MJ) has been studied because of its application as an antitumor drug compound. However, as MJ is a poorly water-soluble compound, a suitable oil-in-water microemulsion (ME) has been studied in order to provide its solubilization in an aqueous media and to allow its administration by the parenteral route. The ME used in this work was characterized on the pseudo-ternary phase diagram by dynamic light scattering and rheological measurements. Regardless of the drug presence, the droplet size was directly dependent on the oil/surfactant (O/S) ratio. Furthermore, the drug incorporation into the ME significantly increased the ME diameter, mainly at low O/S ratios. The rheological evaluation of the systems showed that in the absence of drug a Newtonian behavior was observed. On the other hand, in the presence of MJ the ME systems revealed pseudoplastic behavior, independently of the O/S ratio. The in vivo studies demonstrated that not only was the effect on the tumor inhibition inversely dependent on the MJ-loaded ME administered dose, but also it was slightly higher than the doxorubicin alone, which was used as the positive control. Additionally, a small antiangiogenic effect for MJ-loaded ME was found at doses in which it possesses antitumor activity. MJ revealed to be nontoxic at doses higher than 350 mg/kg, which was higher than the dose that provides tumor-inhibition effect in this study. Because the MJ-loaded ME was shown to have anticancer activity comparable to doxorubicin, the ME described here may be considered a suitable vehicle for parenteral administration of MJ.

Polynuclear platinum complexes constitute a special class of hopeful antitumor agents. In this study, a Y-type monofunctional trinuclear platinum complex (MTPC) with 1,3,5-tris(pyridin-2-ylmethoxy)benzene, ammine and chloride as ligands was synthesized and characterized by (1)H NMR and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). The DNA binding mode of MTPC was investigated using circular dichroism spectroscopy and gel electrophoresis, and the reactivity of MTPC towards glutathione was studied by (1)H NMR and ESI-MS. The results show that MTPC can affect the conformation of calf-thymus DNA (CT-DNA) significantly and tends to form 1,4-GG rather than 1,2-GG intrastrand crosslinks, which are different from the instance of cisplatin. MTPC reacts with glutathione quite slowly in comparison with cisplatin because of the steric hindrance. The cytotoxicity of MTPC was tested on the human breast cancer cell line MCF-7, the human non-small-cell lung cancer cell line A549, and the human ovarian cancer cell line Skov-3 by the MTT [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] assay. MTPC is more potent than or comparable to cisplatin. The cellular inhibition mode of MTPC was examined by flow cytometry using MCF-7 cells. MTPC arrests the cell cycle mainly in G2 or M phase, while cisplatin arrests the cell cycle in S phase. Similar to cisplatin, MTPC kills the cells predominantly through an apoptotic pathway., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Although chemotherapeutic drugs are widely applied for clinic tumor treatment, severe toxicity restricts their therapeutic efficacy. In this study, we reported a new form of selenium, selenium nanoparticles (Nano Se) which have significant lower toxicity and acceptable bioavailability. We investigated Nano Se as chemotherapy preventive agent to protect against toxicities of anticancer drug irinotecan and synergistically enhance the anti-tumor treatment effect in vitro and in vivo. The underlying mechanisms were also investigated. The combination of Nano Se and irinotecan showed increased cytotoxic effect with HCT-8 tumor cells likely by p53 mediated apoptosis. Nano Se inhibited growth of HCT-8 tumor cells partially through caspases mediated apoptosis. In vivo experiment showed Nano Se at a dose of 4 mg/kg/day significantly alleviated adverse effects induced by irinotecan (60 mg/kg) treatment. Nano Se alone treatment did not induce any toxic manifestations. The combination of Nano Se and irinotecan dramatically inhibited tumor growth and significantly induced apoptosis of tumor cells in HCT-8 cells xenografted tumor. Tumor inhibition rate was about 17.2%, 48.6% and 62.1% for Nano Se, irinotecan and the combination of Nano Se and irinotecan, respectively. The beneficial effects of Nano Se for tumor therapy were mainly ascribed to selectively regulating Nrf2-ARE (antioxidant responsive elements) pathway in tumor tissues and normal tissues. Our results suggest Nano Se is a promising selenium species with potential application in cancer treatment., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Unlabelled: Homology modeling and structural analysis of human P-glycoprotein (hP-gp) were performed with a software package the Molecular Operating Environment (MOE). A mouse P-gp (mP-gp; PDB code: 3G5U) was selected as a template for the 3D structure modeling of hP-gp. The modeled hP-gp showed significant 3D similarities at the drug biding site (DBS) to the mP-gp structure. The contact energy profiles of the hP-gp model were in good agreement with those of the mP-gp structure. Ramachandran plots revealed that only 3.5% of the amino acid residues were in the disfavored region for hP-gp. Further, docking simulations between 6-(methylsulfinyl)hexyl isothiocyanate (6-MITC) and the P-gp models revealed the similarity of the ligand-receptor bound location between the hP-gp and mP-gp models. These results indicate that the hP-gp model was successfully modeled and analyzed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a hP-gp model with a naturally occurring isothiocyanate, and our data verify that the model can be utilized for application to target hP-gp for the development of antitumor drugs., Abbreviations: ABC - ATP-binding cassette, ASE-Dock - alpha sphere and excluded volume-based ligand-protein docking, DBS - drug biding site, MDR - multidrug resistance, MOE - Molecular Operating Environment, ITC - isothiocyanate, P-gp - P-glycoprotein.

Unlabelled: Structural analysis of the high-mobility group protein B1 (HMGB1)-DNA complex and a docking simulation between glycyrrhetinic acid (GA) and the HMGB1-DNA complex were performed with a software package the Molecular Operating Environment (MOE). An HMGB1-DNA (PDB code: 2GZK) was selected for the 3D structure modeling of the HMGB1-DNA complex. The Site Finder module of the MOE identified 16 possible ligand-binding sites in the modeled HMGB1-DNA complex. The docking simulation revealed that GA possibly inhibits functions of HMGB1 interfering with Lys(90), Arg(91), Ser(101), Tyr(149), C(230) and C(231) in the HMGB1-DNA complex. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of an HMGB1-DNA complex with GA, and our data verify that the GA-HMGB1-DNA model can be utilized for application to target HMGB1 for the development of antitumor drugs., Abbreviations: ASE-Dock - alpha sphere and excluded volume-based ligand-protein docking, CNS - central nervous system, GA - glycyrrhetinic acid, GL - glycyrrhizin, HMGB1 - high-mobility group protein B1, LBS - ligand-biding site, MOE - Molecular Operating Environment, SRY - sex-determining region on the Y chromosome.