BACKGROUND The use of natural bioactive compounds in conventional chemotherapy is a new direction in cancer treatment that is gaining more research attention recently. Bioactive polysaccharides and polysaccharide-protein complexes from some fungi (edible mushrooms) have been identified as sources of effective and non-toxic antineoplastic agents. Selected oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus pulmonarius ...

Vinca rosea (fam. apocynaeceae) is a medicinal plant commonly grown in Indian gardens and a native of West Indies. Various parts of this plant have been reported to exert antidiabetic, hypotensive and antileukemic property (1-3). Significant hypoglycemic and antihyperglycemic activity of water soluble fraction of alcoholic extract of leaves of Vinca rosea in rats have already been reported by t...

Amphotericin B is a polyene that binds to sterols and perforates cell membranes. An antileukemic drug such as daunomycin added exogenously is impermeable to the red cell membrane. However, when the cells are incubated with a low concentration of amphotericin B, daunomycin is entrapped in the red cells without hemolysis or alteration in the chemical parameter of the erythrocytes. The erythrocyte...

The antileukemic activity (medium effective dose, MED) of a set of 37 carboquinones was modeled using a combination of the electrotopological state (E-state) and molecular connectivity indices with multiple linear regression. A four-variable model gave good statistics: r2 = 0.90, s = 0.21. Using the leave-one-out method, the cross-validation statistics indicate a model useful for prediction: r2...

The antitumor effects of methotrexate against early leukemia L1210 were partially reversed by the coadministration of allopurinol in vivo, even though allopurinol did not alter the growth-inhibitory effects of methotrexate against L1210 cells in culture. These data suggest that this alteration in antitumor activity results from a decreased catabolism of preformed systemic purines by allopurinol...

BACKGROUND Although cancers are characterized by the deregulation of multiple signalling pathways, most current anticancer therapies involve the modulation of a single target. Because of the enormous biological diversity of cancer, strategic combination of agents targeted against the most critical of those alterations is needed. Due to their complex nature, plant products interact with numerous...