A large number of medicinal plants have therapeutic potentials. In this study polyphenolic extracts from leaves of Wattakaka volubilis have been applied for HPLC, which reports the presence of seven flavonoids. Extracts have been tested for antimitotic and antiproliferating activities. Allium cepa root tips were been used to evaluate cytotoxicity. Polyphenolic and methanolic extracts were toxic...

Two paradigms exist for maintaining order during cell-cycle progression: intrinsic controls, where passage through one part of the cell cycle directly affects the ability to execute another, and checkpoint controls, where external pathways impose order in response to aberrant structures. By studying the mitotic inhibitor Mik1, we have identified evidence for an intrinsic link between unperturbe...

Colchicine, which does not fluoresce in aqueous media and organic solvents, exhibits marked fluorescence on combination with brain tubulin, with a corrected excitation maximum at 362 nm, an emission maximum at 435 nm, and a quantum yield of about 0.03. From fluorescence measurements it was found that rat brain tubulin binds 0.83 moles of colchicine per dimer (molecular weight 110,000) with an a...

We have successfully used mutagenesis to engineer Taxol (paclitaxel) binding activity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae tubulin. Taxol, a successful antitumor agent, acts by promoting tubulin assembly and stabilizing microtubules. Several structurally diverse antimitotic compounds, including the epothilones, compete with Taxol for binding to mammalian microtubules, suggesting that Taxol and these com...

First-cleavage mouse embryos, fertilized in vitro and in vivo, provide ideal material for chromosomal analysis. With the appropriate incubation in a mitotic inhibitor, syngamy is prevented and the sperm- and egg-derived chromosomes remain as separate clusters. Because the latter chromosomes undergo condensation sooner than those from the spermatozoon, the parental source of chromosome sets can ...

In an attempt to mimic the 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl-Z-stilbene moiety of combretastatin A-4, a series of N-aryl-5,6,7-trimethoxyindoles were synthesized via copper-catalyzed Ullmann-type N-arylation through the corresponding 5,6,7-trimethoxyindole and aryl halides. These synthesized compounds demonstrated potent antiproliferative activity providing a novel skeleton for potent tubulin polymerizati...

Leiodermatolide is an antimitotic macrolide isolated from the marine sponge Leiodermatium sp. whose potentially novel tubulin-targeting mechanism of action makes it an exciting lead for anticancer drug discovery. In pursuit of a sustainable supply, we report a highly stereocontrolled total synthesis (3.2% yield) based on a convergent sequence of palladium-mediated fragment assembly and macrolac...

PURPOSE To evaluate the fibroblast proliferation activity of normal Tenon's capsule from primary and recurrent patients with pterygium. METHODS A randomized prospective study was performed with 41 normal Tenon's capsule fragments from 21 primary and 20 recurrent patients with pterygium. The sample was collected from the inferior cul-de-sac. Proliferation rate from fibroblasts were evaluated a...

Cell biology and crystallographic studies have suggested a functional link between stathmin and microtubule targeting agents (MTAs). In a previous study we showed that stathmin increases vinblastine (VLB) binding to tubulin, and that conversely VLB increases stathmin binding to tubulin. This constituted the first biochemical evidence of the direct relationship between stathmin and an antimitoti...

Neurogenesis occurs in some regions of the adult mammalian brain and gives rise to neurons integrated into functional networks. In pathological or postlesional conditions, neurogenesis and astrogenesis can also occur, as demonstrated in the deafferented vestibular nuclei after unilateral vestibular neurectomy in the adult cat. Here we report that in cats infused with an antimitotic drug, cytosi...