Postharvest management affects spearmint and calamint essential oils.

BACKGROUND: The objectives of this work were to evaluate the phytomass yield, essential oil (EO) content and EO yield of Mentha spicata L. var. rubra, M. spicata L. var. viridis and Calamintha nepeta Savi in Piedmont (Italy), and to study how postharvest management (hydrodistillation of EO from fresh, dehumidified or oven-dried herbs) can affect the EO content and profile of the three species. RESULTS: Mentha spicata L. var. rubra gave the greatest phytomass yield (1997 g m(-2)), which was statistically different from M. spicata L. var. viridis and C. nepeta. The highest EO yield was obtained from C. nepeta (3.75 g m(-2)), which was significantly different from the Mentha genus. Postharvest management significantly affected both the EO content and the EO profile of each species, with the dehumidifying process leading to a significantly higher EO content than the oven-drying process. The EO profile was different not only from species to species but also because of the postharvest management. CONCLUSION: The dehumidifying process is a relatively new postharvest technology that has shown positive results in terms of EO yield, and it can be applied to species which have a high EO value, after evaluation of the resulting EO profile.

Prostate carcinoma cells LNCaP and glucan cooperate in induction of cytokine synthesis by dendritic cells: effect on natural killer cells and CD4+ lymphocytes activation.

BACKGROUND: Glucan is an immunomodulating agent used for cancer therapy. We investigated the effects of glucan on immune cell response to prostate carcinoma. METHODS: Dendritic cells (DC) were co-cultured with prostate carcinoma cells LNCaP and/or glucan, and maturation markers expression, cytokine release, and superoxide anion production were evaluated. Conditioned media from glucan-treated or untreated DC and/or LNCaP cultures were used to stimulate T lymphocytes and natural killer (NK) cells. RESULTS: LNCaP promoted partial DC maturation and scarce IL-12 secretion. Glucan induced DC maturation but no IL-12 production by DC. However, glucan increased IL-12 release by DC co-cultured with LNCaP. Moreover, LNCaP enhanced IL-1ß, IL-23, IL-6, and TNF-α secretion, but decreased superoxide anion production in glucan-stimulated DC. The NADPH oxidase inhibitor diphenyliodonium chloride (DPI) and the superoxide anion scavenger superoxide dismutase (SOD) reproduced this effect, but did not affect IL-12 secretion. Conditioned media of glucan-treated DC/LNCaP co-cultures activated IFN-γ production by NK cells and Th1/Th17 generation by CD4(+) lymphocytes, whereas media from DC/LNCaP co-cultured without glucan produced scarce NK and CD4(+) cells responses. Experiments performed with an IL-12-blocking antibody demonstrated that these effects arise from glucan-dependent regulation of IL-12 production by DC. CONCLUSIONS: Glucan and LNCaP cooperate in induction of cytokine synthesis by DC. LNCaP enhance IL-1ß, IL-23, IL-6, and TNF-α secretion by decreasing glucan-dependent NADPH oxidase activity, whereas glucan increases IL-12 production through NADPH oxidase-unrelated mechanisms. This cooperation is essential to elicit a substantial NK cells and CD4(+) lymphocytes activity, pointing out a potential relevance of glucan in prostate cancer therapy.

Pleiotropic effects of sphingosine-1-phosphate signaling to control human chorionic mesenchymal stem cell physiology.

Chorionic stem cells represent a promising opportunity for regenerative medicine. A deeper understanding of the stimuli that regulate their physiology, could lead to innovative clinical approaches. We revealed the presence of multiple sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) receptor isoforms in chorion-derived mesenchymal stem cells (CMSCs). Their activation simultaneously propagated from the plasma membrane through Gi and other heterotrimeric G proteins and further diverged toward extracellular-signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2), p38 and protein kinase D 1. At a functional level, S1P signaling inhibited CMSC migration, while promoting proliferation. Instead, a reduction of cell density was obtained when S1P was combined to treatments that increased cAMP intracellular concentration. Such surprising reduction of cell viability was relatively specific as it was not observed with stromal stem cells from bone marrow. Neither it was observed by activating analogous G proteins with bradykinin nor by inducing cell death via a cAMP-independent pathway. S1P could thus reveal novel keys to improve CMSC differentiation programs acting on cAMP concentration. Furthermore, S1P receptor agonists/antagonists could become instrumental in favoring CMSC engraftment by controlling cell motility.

Immune regulatory properties of CD117(pos) amniotic fluid stem cells vary according to gestational age.

Amniotic Fluid Stem (AFS) cells are broadly multipotent fetal stem cells derived from the positive selection and ex vivo expansion of amniotic fluid CD117/c-kit(pos) cells. Considering the differentiation potential in vitro toward cell lineages belonging to the three germ layers, AFS cells have raised great interest as a new therapeutic tool, but their immune properties still need to be assessed. We analyzed the in vitro immunological properties of AFS cells from different gestational age in coculture with T, B, and natural killer (NK) cells. Nonactivated (resting) first trimester-AFS cells showed lower expression of HLA class-I molecules and NK-activating ligands than second and third trimester-AFS cells, whose features were associated with lower sensitivity to NK cell-mediated lysis. Nevertheless, inflammatory priming with interferon gamma (IFN-γ) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) enhanced resistance of all AFS cell types to NK cytotoxicity. AFS cells modulated lymphocyte proliferation in a different manner according to gestational age: first trimester-AFS cells significantly inhibited T and NK cell proliferation, while second and third trimester-AFS cells were less efficient. In addition, only inflammatory-primed second trimester-AFS cells could suppress B cell proliferation, which was not affected by the first and third trimester-AFS cells. Indolamine 2,3 dioxygenase pathway was significantly involved only in T cell suppression mediated by second and third trimester-AFS cells. Overall, this study shows a number of significant quantitative differences among AFS cells of different gestational age that have to be considered in view of their clinical application.

Gold(I) or silver catalyzed synthesis of α-indolylacrylates.

Methyl 2-acetamidoacrylate reacted with various 2-substituted indoles in the presence of catalytic amounts of AgSbF6 or AuPPh3NTf2 to provide the corresponding methyl 2-(2-substituted-1H-indol-3-yl)acrylates.

Comparative study of immune regulatory properties of stem cells derived from different tissues.

Allogeneic stem cell (SC)-based therapy is a promising tool for the treatment of a range of human degenerative and inflammatory diseases. Many reports highlighted the immune modulatory properties of some SC types, such as mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), but a comparative study with SCs of different origin, to assess whether immune regulation is a general SC property, is still lacking. To this aim, we applied highly standardized methods employed for MSC characterization to compare the immunological properties of bone marrow-MSCs, olfactory ectomesenchymal SCs, leptomeningeal SCs, and three different c-Kit-positive SC types, that is, amniotic fluid SCs, cardiac SCs, and lung SCs. We found that all the analyzed human SCs share a common pattern of immunological features, in terms of expression of activation markers ICAM-1, VCAM-1, HLA-ABC, and HLA-DR, modulatory activity toward purified T, B, and NK cells, lower immunogenicity of inflammatory-primed SCs as compared to resting SCs, and indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase-activation as molecular inhibitory pathways, with some SC type-related peculiarities. Moreover, the SC types analyzed exert an anti-apoptotic effect toward not-activated immune effector cells (IECs). In addition, we found that the inhibitory behavior is not a constitutive property of SCs, but is acquired as a consequence of IEC activation, as previously described for MSCs. Thus, immune regulation is a general property of SCs and the characterization of this phenomenon may be useful for a proper therapeutic use of SCs.