Pancreatic cancer is a malignant neoplasm originating from transformed cells arising in pancreas, one of the highest fatality rates of all cancers, extremely poor prognosis and resistant to current chemotherapies, therefore, new strategies or reagents to tackle this disease are needed. Triptolide (TPL) is a diterpenoid triepoxide and the principal active ingredient of Tripterygium wilfordii Hoo...

OBJECTIVE To observe the clinical efficacy of the Chinese herb, Triptolide, in children with moderately severe Henoch-Schönlein purpura nephritis (HSPN). METHODS From January 2007 to December 2011, 56 HSPN children manifested by nephrotic range proteinuria with normal kidney function and <50% crescents or sclerosing lesions on biopsy were hospitalized in the Children's Hospital of Zhejiang Un...

A new approach to the medicinally-important natural product triptolide is significantly shorter than previous syntheses, highly convergent and avoids the use of protecting groups; key features include two Diels-Alder reactions and a new deoxygenative aromatisation process.

Triptolide (TP), a major active component of Tripterygium wilfordii Hook.F. (TWHF), is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, it has a narrow therapeutic window due to its serious toxicities. To increase the therapeutic index, a new triptolide-loaded transdermal delivery system, named triptolide-loaded liposome hydrogel patch (TP-LHP), has been developed. In this paper, we used a mic...

Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease with a survival rate of <5%. Moreover, pancreatic cancer aggressiveness is closely related to high levels of prosurvival mediators, which can ultimately lead to rapid disease progression. One of the mechanisms that enables tumor cells to evade cellular stress and promote unhindered proliferation is the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response. Distur...

Cancer is a major cause of death worldwide and there are over 100 different types of cancers. The current treatment strategies for cancer patients such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiation or the combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy may have successfully increased five-year survival rates. However, the long-term survival rates remain poor due to cancer relapse, tumor resistance and me...

Mutations in PKD1 result in autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease, which is characterized by increased proliferation of tubule cells leading to cyst initiation and subsequent expansion. Given the cell proliferation associated with cyst growth, an attractive therapeutic strategy has been to target the hyperproliferative nature of the disease. We previously demonstrated that the small mole...

BACKGROUND Breast cancer is a major cause of death; in fact, it is the most common type, in order of the number of global deaths, of cancer in women worldwide. This research seeks to investigate how triptolide, an extract from the Chinese herb Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F, induces apoptosis in MCF-7 human breast cancer cells. Accumulating evidence suggests a role for lysosomal proteases in the...

Proinflammatory cytokines mediate the toxic effects of superantigenic staphylococcal exotoxins (SE) and bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Triptolide, an oxygenated diterpene derived from a traditional Chinese medicinal herb, Tripterygium wilfordii, inhibited SE-stimulated T-cell proliferation (by 98%) and expression of interleukin 1beta, interleukin 6, tumor necrosis factor, gamma interferon,...

During kidney organogenesis, tubular epithelial cells proliferate until a functional tubule is formed as sensed by cilia bending in response to fluid flow. This flow-induced ciliary mechanosensation opens the calcium (Ca(2+)) channel polycystin-2 (PC2), resulting in a calcium flux-mediated cell cycle arrest. Loss or mutation of either PC2 or its regulatory protein polycystin-1 (PC1) results in ...