Current Bioactive Compounds - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2008

Bidens pilosa L. (Asteraceae) is routinely used in African pharmacopoeia for the management of inflammations, diarrhoea and cardiovascular disorders including hypertension. The implication of β-adrenomimetic agonist substances in the hypotension and vasodilatation induced by a chromatographic active fraction F2 of the leaves aqueous extract (BpF2) were investigated. BpF2 induced a dose-dependent hypotensio Read More

The need of using chemically modified siRNA agents for gene silencing continuously increasing as appropriate chemical modification improves their specificity, nuclease stability, potency, and in vivo cellular delivery. The future success of RNAi technology also depends on identifying drug carriers that are non-toxic and tissue-specific in directing the RNAi agents to the desired locations in a cost effective fashion. This review will cov Read More

About 20 species from Callicarpa have reported ethnobotanical and ethnomedical uses, and several members of this genus are well known in the traditional medical systems of China and South Asia. Ethnomedical reports indicate their use in the treatment of hepatitis, rheumatism, fever, headache, indigestion, and other ailments. Several species of Callicarpa have been reported to be used against cancer (e.g., Callicarpa Read More

The larvicidal activity of Pimpinella anisum (anise) and Apium graveolens (celery) seed extracts was evaluated against 4th instar Aedes aegypti larvae under laboratory conditions as per WHO methodology. Preliminary screening showed anise seed extracts to be more active than celery seed extracts and hexane produced the best extract of anise seeds giving a mildly potent lethal concentration of 403.84 mg/L. Other researc Read More

Increasing drug resistance among bacteria, fungi and other pathogenic microbes and the remarkable increase in the incidence of fungal infections like dermatomycoses in the world population underscore our inadequacy to deal with them. Thus there is an urgent need to search chemically novel, natural, renewable and safe anti-microbial substances that can offer opportunity for innovation of new drugs to combat the wides Read More

Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) are phase II detoxification enzymes that function in the conjugation of glutathione (GSH) to cytotoxic substances rendering them water soluble and easily excreted from the body. Many tumor cells tend to strongly increase the expression of GST, and this is thought to be associated with a poor prognosis for response to anticancer treatment of patients. Such in vitro over-expression of GST m Read More

Paclitaxil is a non-water soluble anti-cancer drug with problems of solvent related toxicities due to use of ethanol and polyethylated castor-oil for administration. Several formulations have been prepared to overcome the solubility problem and the present work describes one of such possibility of the preparation of water-soluble paclitaxil nanoparticles by Emulsion-solvent evaporation technique. The paclitaxil nanoparticles were Read More