introduction: ischemia leads to loss of neurons by apoptosis in specific brain regions, especially in the hippocampus. the purpose of this study was investigating the effects of exercise preconditioning on expression of bax, bcl-2, and caspase-3 proteins in hippocampal ca1 neurons after induction of cerebral ischemia. methods: male rats weighing 260-300 g were randomly allocated into three grou...

Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) has been the focus as a potential anticancer drug, because it induces apoptosis in a wide variety of cancer cells but not in most normal human cell types. In this study, we showed that combination treatment with sub-toxic doses of antimycin A (AMA), an inhibitor of electron transport, plus TRAIL induced apoptosis in human renal can...

background : biomarkers accepted for clinical use in breast cancer have low sensitivity and specificity. thus, there is a need for new markers to assist in the diagnosis, prognosis and follow-up of breast cancer patients. this study aims to investigate the diagnostic, prognostic and follow-up role of serum bcl-2, bax and p53 proteins in breast cancer patients in comparison with those of serum c...

Resveratrol has been shown to induce anti-proliferation and apoptosis of human cancer cell lines. In the present study, we determined the effect of high intracellular levels of the anti-apoptosis protein Bcl-2 on caspase-3 activation, PLC-gamma1 degradation and cytochrome c release during resveratrol-induced apoptosis. For this, we used U937/vector and U937/Bcl-2 cells, which were generated by ...

Genetic analysis of programmed cell death in Drosophila reveals many similarities with mammals. Heretofore, a missing link in the fly has been the absence of any Bcl-2/Bax family members, proteins that function in mammals as regulators of mitochondrial cytochrome c release. A Drosophila homologue of the human killer protein Bok (DBok) was identified. The predicted structure of DBok is similar t...

BACKGROUND Apoptosis related proteins in early staged NSCLC seem to have prognostic value. We studied the value of a combination of eight of those proteins in advanced NSCLC. PATIENTS AND METHODS Bronchoscopically procured tumor biopsies of NSCLC patients were stained immunohistochemically and rated for expression of eight different cellular proteins. Patients were treated with 60 Gy radiothe...

The proteins of the B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) family are important regulators of apoptosis under normal and pathological conditions. Chemical compounds that block the antiapoptotic proteins of this family have been introduced, such as 4-[4-[(4'-Chloro[1,1'-biphenyl]-2-yl)methyl]-1-piperazinyl]-N-[[4-[[(1R)-3-(dimethylamino)-1-[(phenylthio)methyl]propyl]amino]-3-nitrophenyl]sulfonyl]benzamide (A...

Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpes virus (KSHV) contains a gene that has functional and sequence homology to the apoptotic Bcl-2 family of proteins [Sarid, R., Sato, T., Bohenzky, R. A., Russo, J. J. & Chang, Y. (1997) Nat. Med. 3, 293-298]. The viral Bcl-2 protein promotes survival of infected cells and may contribute to the development of Kaposi sarcoma tumors [Boshoff, C. & Chang, Y. (2001) An...

The BH3 domain of Bcl-2 proteins was regarded as indispensable for apoptosis induction and for mutual regulation of family members. We recently described Bcl-x(AK), a proapoptotic splice product of the bcl-x gene, which lacks BH3 but encloses BH2, BH4 and a transmembrane domain. It remained however unclear, how Bcl-x(AK) may trigger apoptosis.For efficient overexpression, Bcl-x(AK) was subclone...

BACKGROUND It is well known that gastric mucosa dysplasia and intestinal metaplasia are gastric precancerous lesions (GPL). Moxibustion treatment of Liangmen (ST21) and Zusanli (ST36) alleviated the inflammatory response and dysplasia of gastric mucosa in our previous study. The purpose of this study was to further examine the underlying mechanism of moxibustion treatment of ST21 and ST36 on GP...