Antioxidant activity and phenolic composition of wild, edible, and medicinal fennel from different Mediterranean countries.

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) is a typical aromatic plant of the Mediterranean area, long used as a medicinal and spice herb. Fennel is also well-known for its essential oil, which has been extensively studied for many years owing to its commercial importance. In this work, the antioxidant activity and the total phenolic and flavonoid contents, as well as the quantitative determination of individual flavonoids and phenolic acids of wild, edible, and medicinal fennel from different Mediterranean countries, have been determined. The antioxidant activity was measured as the free radical (DPPH), hydroxyl radical, and superoxide anion scavenging activities. Wild fennel was found to exhibit a radical scavenging activity, as well as a total phenolic and total flavonoid content, higher than those of both medicinal and edible fennels.

Photoactivated cationic alkyl-substituted porphyrin binding to g4-RNA in the 5'-UTR of KRAS oncogene represses translation.

The KRAS transcript is characterized by a 192-nt 5'-UTR containing repetitive runs of two-guanines which can fold in several G-quadruplexes. These folded structures have a high affinity for the cationic porphyrin tri-meso(N-methyl-4-pyridyl), meso(N-tetradecyl-4-pyridyl) porphine (TMPyP4-C14), which efficiently penetrates cell membranes. Upon photoactivation TMPyP4-C14 induces a dramatic down-regulation of oncogenic KRAS and cell growth arrest in pancreatic cancer cells.