The PI3K/Akt pathway regulates various stress-related cellular responses such as cell survival, cell proliferation, metabolism and protein synthesis. Many cancer cell types display the activation of this pathway, and compounds inhibiting this cell survival pathway have been extensively evaluated as anti-cancer agents. In addition to cancers, several human viruses, such as HTLV, HPV, HCV and HIV...

BACKGROUND Ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury contributes to organ dysfunction in a variety of clinical disorders, including myocardial infarction, stroke, organ transplantation, and hemorrhagic shock. Recent investigations have demonstrated that apoptosis as an important mechanism of cell death leading to organ dysfunction following I/R. Intracellular danger-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs...

Amifostine is one of the cytoprotective drugs used during anticancer therapy. Amifostine as a thiol compound possesses antioxidant properties and protects only healthy cells against damage, mainly by scavenging reactivity oxygen species, competing with oxygen to prevent oxygen radical interactions with DNA, and promoting cell repair through hydrogen donation to reactive oxygen species. The aim ...

BACKGROUND Imbalance of iron homeostasis has been reported in sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob-disease (sCJD) affected human and scrapie infected animal brains, but the contribution of this phenotype to disease associated neurotoxicity is unclear. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Using cell models of familial prion disorders, we demonstrate that exposure of cells expressing normal prion protein (PrP(...

BACKGROUND Palm kernel cake (PKC), a by-product of the palm oil industry is abundantly available in many tropical and subtropical countries. The product is known to contain high levels of phenolic compounds that may impede the deleterious effects of fungal mycotoxins. This study focused on the evaluation of PKC phenolics as a potential cytoprotective agent towards aflatoxin B1 (AFB1)-induced ce...

Major differences are evident between Japanese and Western practice in the prevention of gastrointestinal injury caused by low-dose aspirin (LDA) and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). The proportion of physicians prescribing gastroprotective agents with NSAIDs and LDA with the aim of preventing gastrointestinal injury is 77% in Japan and between 7084% in Spain, showing the great ma...

The discovery of primitive cardiac stem-like cells with the ability for self-renewal and the capacity for differentiation into all cardiac cell lineages has completely changed the prevailing view of the heart as a static, terminally differentiated organ.1 Like virtually all somatic tissues, the adult heart harbors a pool of stem/progenitor cells responsible for the maintenance of organ cell hom...

Oxidative stress is an imbalance between pro-oxidants and antioxidants in favor of the pro-oxidants, leading to different responses depending on the level of pro-oxidants achieved and the duration of exposure. In this article, we discuss the cytoprotective or suicidal signaling mechanisms associated with oxidative stress by addressing: (i) the development of an acute and mild pro-oxidant state ...

background and objectives: otostegia persica (burm.) boiss. is an endemic plant of iran with various applications in traditional medicine which contains of several antioxidant constituents. this research was aimed to investigate the effect of hydroalcoholic extract from o. persica aerial parts in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (huvecs) using hydrogen peroxide (h2o2) as an inducer of oxi...