Background: The plant Ecballium elaterium (L.) A. Rich, belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family which occupies an important position in traditional medicine prescriptions. It has been reported that a freeze-dried aqueous extract of E. elaterium fruits has cytotoxic effects on the AGS human stomach adenocarcinoma cell line. We here focused on anticancer effects of the main chemicals purified from E....

 Background: Gastric and colorectal adenocarcinoma are the second and the fifth most common cancers in Iran, respectively. Expression of cytokeratin 7 (CK7) is established in most malignancies including gastric and colorectal adenocarcinoma. Demonstration of Ck7 could be related to prognostic factors and help to the better management of the patients. The objective of our study was to evalu...

Gastric cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death and remains a major clinical challenge due to poor prognosis and limited treatment options. Therefore, the basic mechanisms underlying gastric tumorigenesis deserve investigation. Although regulation of the galactoside-binding lectin galectin-7 in cancer has been studied, its role in tumor formation and progression remains controversial...

The pyloric antral hormone gastrin plays a role in remodeling of the gastric epithelium, but the specific targets of gastrin that mediate these effects are poorly understood. Glandular epithelial cells of the gastric corpus express matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-1, which is a potential determinant of tissue remodeling; some of these cells express the CCK-2 receptor at which gastrin acts. We hav...

Background: The role of oncolytic viruses in cancer treatment is increasingly studied. The first oncolytic virus (Rigvir®, ECHO-7) was registered in Latvia over a decade ago. In a recent retrospective study Rigvir® decreased mortality 4.39-6.57-fold in stage IB-IIC melanoma patients. The aims of the present study are to test the effect of Rigvir® on cell line viability in vitro and to visualize...

Combretastatin A4 (CA4) is a drug that targets tumor vasculature to inhibit angiogenesis. Whether CA4 has a direct effect on gastric cancer is not known. We herein investigated the effect of CA4 on growth and metastasis of gastric cancer cells at clinically achievable concentration and explored the associated antitumor mechanisms. Nine human gastric cancer cell lines, including two metastatic g...

The aim of the present study was to determine the anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effects of dihydromyricetin (DHM) on the AGS human gastric cancer cells and their underlying mechanisms. The effects of DHM on AGS cells were evaluated by using 3-(4, 5-di-methylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT), lactate dehydrogenase, and Annexin V/propidium iodide (PI) double-staining assa...

Objectives Cucurbitacins exhibit a range of anti-cancer functions. We investigated the effects of cucurbitacins D, E, and I purified from Ecballium elaterium (L.) A. Rich fruits on some apoptotic and autophagy genes in human gastric cancer cell line AGS. Materials and Methods Using quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR), the expression of LC3, VEGF, BAX, caspase-3, and c-MYC genes w...