Secretion of granular glands from the skin of amphibians is a fascinating resource of active substances, particularly for cancer therapy in clinical practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine. A variety of anti-tumor peptides have been isolated from different toads and frogs; however, no anti-tumor peptides are reported in toad venom of Bufo gargarizans. Firstly, soluble fraction from fresh toad ...

An intronic hexanucleotide repeat expansion (HRE) mutation in the C9ORF72 gene is the most common cause of familial ALS and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and is found in ∼7% of individuals with apparently sporadic disease. Several different diamino acid peptides can be generated from the HRE by noncanonical translation (repeat-associated non-ATG translation, or RAN translation), and some of the...

Fibroblast-Activation Protein-α (FAP) is a membrane-bound serine protease that is expressed on the surface of reactive stromal fibroblasts present within the majority of human epithelial tumors but is not expressed by normal tissues. FAP is a postprolyl peptidase that differs from other dipeptidyl prolyl peptidases such as diprolylpeptidase 4 in that it also has gelatinase and collagenase endop...

Prefibrillar amyloid aggregates of proteins are known as cytotoxic species and a common pathogenic factor for many degenerative diseases. The mechanism underlying the formation and cytotoxicity of prefibrillar aggregates is believed to be independent of the actual nature of the amyloid protein. In this study, we monitored the formation of the peptide oligomers and examined the disruptive effect...

Peptaibols are known membrane-modifying peptides that were recently detected in marine sediments and mussels collected from a shellfish farming area (Fier d'Ars, Atlantic coast, France). In this investigation, embryotoxicity bioassays with oysters (Crassostrea gigas) were performed to assess acute toxicity of alamethicin and different groups of peptaibols produced by a Trichoderma longibrachiat...

p28 and nrc peptides are two anticancer peptides with various mechanisms have shown to be effective against breast cancer. therefore, it seems that construction of a chimeric protein containing the two peptides might cause synergistic cytotoxic effects. however, since the two peptides bear opposite charges, production of a chimeric protein in which the two moieties do not intervene each other i...

we have employed a peptide-based antibody generation protocol for producing antibody against human nestin. using a 12-mer synthetic peptide from repetitive region of human nestin protein devoid of any n- or o-glyco-sylation sequences, we generated a mouse monoclonal antibody capable of recognizing human, mouse, bovine, and rat nestin. a wide variety of nestin proteins ranging from 140-250 kda w...

introduction: tobacco smoke is involved in the pathogenesis of several diseases in different body systems. saliva is the first body fluid that confront inhaled cigarette smoke which is injurious to the oral cavity and is associated with several oral diseases and cancer. the aim of our study was to evaluate the influence of smoking on the activity of alpha-amylase in the saliva of healthy smoker...