An ultra high pressure liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric (UHPLC-MS/MS) method for the simultaneous quantitation of pravastatin and major metabolites, 3′α-hydroxy-pravastatin, pravalactone and 3′α-hydroxy-pravalactone, in human plasma has been developed and validated. Aliquots o...

HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor statins are used to treat patients with hypercholesterolemia. The pleiotropic effects of statins have been recently extended to the regulation of angiogenesis. However, the observations on the effects of statins on endothelial cells seem to be contradictory. In this w...

Hypercholesterolemia is considered to be an important risk factor in coronary heart disease. Statins has received a lot of attention in recent years due to control of cholesterol biosynthesis and level of cholesterol in the body, by inhibiting the enzyme 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl Coenzyme A (HM...

Several oxindole derivatives, of natural or synthetic origin, have been identified as medicinally appealing compounds, with a plethora of bioactivities reported. Chiral 3-hydroxy and 3-aminooxindole scaffolds have captured the attention of several research groups, due to their importance in drug...

BackgroundTimosaponin A3 (TA3), one of the active components of spirostanol saponin isolated from A. asphodeloides, is widely used as an anticancer agent in a variety of cancer cell lines. However, the research on the anticancer efficacy is very limited in human pancreatic cancer models.

Timosaponin BII (BII), a steroidal saponin showing potential anti-dementia activity, was converted into its glucosylation derivatives by Toruzyme 3.0L. Nine products with different degrees of glucosylation were purified and their structures were elucidated on the basis of 13C NMR, HR-ESI-MS, and...

Timosaponin BII (TBII), a major steroidal saponin isolated from Anemarrhena asphodeloides Bge., displays a variety of promising pharmacological activities, such as neuroprotection, enhancement of learning and memory, vascular protection and inhibition of platelet aggregation; therefore, it has b...

Timosaponin BII (TBII) is an active constituent of some Chinese medicinal herbs, and is abundant in Anemarrhena asphodeloides Bunge. To better understand the pharmaceutical mechanisms of TBII, we prepared its deglycosylated derivatives through biotransformation with fungi Colletotrichum gloeospo...

Phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC) was studied with sonicated dispersions of a thiophosphate analog of phosphatidylinositol, 1,2-dimyristoyloxypropane-3-thiophospho(1d-1-myo-inositol) (d-thio-DMPI). Kinetic parameters were derived from the rate as a function of bulk lipid con...

The trisodium salt of dimyristoylphosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate (DMPI-4P) has been synthesised specifically deuterated at particular sites in the headgroup. These materials have been used in neutron diffraction experiments, which successfully located the position (depth) of each of these deute...

RNA-binding proteins are important modulators of mRNA stability, a crucial process that determines the ultimate cellular levels of mRNAs and their encoded proteins. The tristetraprolin (TTP) family of RNA-binding proteins appeared early in the evolution of eukaryotes, and has persisted in modern...

Spiralian embryogenesis is found in a number of animal phyla, but the molecular mechanisms that pattern these embryos remain poorly understood. A hallmark of spiralian development is the production of tiers of cells, called quartets, that share distinct developmental potentials. Many RNAs have b...

A Drosophila melanogaster (Dm) embryonic cDNA library was screened for genes capable of inhibiting wee1+ /mik1+ protein kinase (Pk) function. We expected to identify homologs of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe gene nim1+. This gene encodes a Pk capable of phosphorylating and so inhibiting the wee1...

SummaryApproximately half of human genes generate mRNAs with alternative 3′ untranslated regions (3′UTRs). Through 3′UTR-mediated protein-protein interactions, alternative 3′UTRs enable multi-functionality of proteins with identical amino acid sequence. While studying how information on prot...

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) play a critical role in the regulation of various RNA processes, including splicing, cleavage and polyadenylation, transport, translation and degradation of coding RNAs, non-coding RNAs and microRNAs. Recent studies indicate that RBPs not only play an instrumental rol...

TIS11, a CCCH zinc finger protein, is one of the typical growth factor-inducible nuclear proteins. We found that TIS11 possesses the potential to activate transcription when fused to the GAL4 DNA binding domain and transiently cotransfected into rat pheochromocytoma PC12 cells along with a GAL4-...

TIS11, a member of the CCCH zinc finger protein family, was found to be distributed throughout cells with a preferential cytoplasmic localization when transiently expressed in COS-7 cells. Upon treatment with heat shock, TIS11 became localized in discrete particles in the cytoplasm of the transf...

TIS11, a member of the CCCH zinc finger protein family, functions as a positive transcriptional regulator. TIS11 was localized in both the cytoplasm and nucleus when transiently expressed in COS-7 cells. Upon treatment with leptomycin B, a specific inhibitor of the nuclear export receptor CRM1, ...

Adult stem cell proliferation rates are precisely regulated to maintain long-term tissue homeostasis. Defects in the mechanisms controlling stem cell proliferation result in impaired regeneration and hyperproliferative diseases. Many stem cell populations increase proliferation in response to ti...

The aim of this study was to found the best conditions to prepare metabolites of terfenadine, ebastine and analogues. For that purpose we investigated the structural substrate requirements needed for the oxidative whole cell activity and selected the most efficient conditions to obtain each comp...