Anti-cancer impact of Hypericin in B-CPAP cells: Extrinsic caspase dependent apoptosis induction and metastasis obstruction.

Thyroid cancer is the most common type of endocrine-related cancer. According to the literature, its incidence is not very high, but its rate increasing especially in developed countries. With this regard, finding approaches to prevent, and exert anti-tumor activity with the least side effects on the normal cells at the next step after diagnosis is demanded. Herbal medicine is a branch of integrative oncology that seems to be a practically beneficial goddess for cancer treatment in many cases. Here we utilized Hypericin (HYP) to investigate its anti-tumor (apoptotic and anti-metastatic) activity on B-CPAP (a thyroid cancer cell line) and cytotoxicity on TPC-1 (thyroid cancer cell line with wild type TP53) cell lines. To assess whether HYP may exert preventive and anti-tumor effects and does not have a potential side effect, we dubbed the experiments on the fibroblast cells (as a normal cell line). Cytotoxicity and kind of cellular death were examined by MTT and AnnexinV/PI respectively. Extrinsic/intrinsic apoptosis pathway induction was clarified by western blotting on pro/cleaved caspases 9, 8, and 3. According to our data HYP induces an extrinsic apoptosis pathway and no other types (necroptosis, necrosis, etc.) in B-CPAP cells. Moreover, CDH1 mRNA expression calculated to be up-regulated, and that of LGALS3 down-regulated in the B-CPAP cell line after treatment. Besides tumor cytotoxic activity, we suggest that HYP impedes with invasion and/or metastasis process.

Metabolic profiling of seminal plasma from teratozoospermia patients.

Teratozoospermia is one of conditions that can cause male infertility. The mechanism of teratozoospermia remains unclear. The knowledge of the metabolites in human seminal plasma (HSP) is meaningful for the pathological study of teratozoospermia. Analysis of changed metabolites in HSP can help understand the cellular mechanism, find the novel biomarkers and subsequently design a diagnosis test. In this study, the analysis of samples performed by proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H NMR spectroscopy) to identify the various metabolites, with the aim of finding metabolic profiles and biomarkers related to male infertility. Eighteen de-regulated metabolites were identified in fertile men compared to teratozoospermia patients. These changes illustrate the deficiencies in absorption or metabolism of these metabolites in teratozoospermia. Furthermore, metabolic profiling showed that it is not possible to classify teratozoospermia based on teratozoospermia index (TZI). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first metabolic profiling analysis of HSP described the metabolic features of teratozoospermia in a holistic view.