BACKGROUND Cystine-knot miniproteins, also known as knottins, have shown great potential as molecular scaffolds for the development of targeted therapeutics and diagnostic agents. For this purpose, previous protein engineering efforts have focused on knottins based on the Ecballium elaterium trypsin inhibitor (EETI) from squash seeds, the Agouti-related protein (AgRP) neuropeptide from mammals,...

BACKGROUND One of the biggest obstacles to progress in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) development in Western countries is the difficulty of applying the traditional concepts to the Western medicinal plants, which are not traditionally described in ancient literature. During recent years, new advances in the field of understanding Yin/Yang aspects from a modern bioscientific point of view ha...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND In Europe, only a limited number of cross-cultural comparative field studies or meta-analyses have been focused on the dynamics through which folk plant knowledge changes over space and time, while a few studies have contributed to the understanding of how plant uses change among newcomers. Nevertheless, ethnic minority groups and/or linguistic "isles" in Southern and E...

Objective(s): 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...

Plants used for traditional medicine contain a wide range of substances which can be used to treat various infectious diseases. Hence, antibacterial activities of ethanolic extracts of 19 plant species were studied against multi-drug resistant clinical isolates using agar well diffusion method. Extracts of Liquidambar orientalis, Vitis vinifera,?? ?????????????????????? ????????????????????,...

Nowadays, increasing in prevalence of multiple drug resistance implies the development of new synthetic antibacterial, antioxidative and anti-inflammatory drugs from alternative sources (Papadoupoulo et al., 2005). Therefore, there is a renewed interest in natural substances containing phytoconstituents that exhibited several biological properties. They are used in health to prevent oxidative d...