Cancers and hepatoprotective prevention using traditional medicines have attracted increasing interest. The aim of our study was to characterize the putative protective effects of ethanol and chloroform extracts of Peganum harmala on thiourea-induced diseases in adult male rat. We seek to determine the effects of these plant extracts on body weight, thyroid and endocrine cancer parameters. In a...

Bioactivity-guided fractionation was used to determine the cytotoxic alkaloids from the toxic plant Peganum harmala. Two novel indole alkaloids, together with ten known ones, were isolated and identified. The novel alkaloids were elucidated to be 2-(indol-3-yl)ethyl-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1 → 6)-β-D-glucopyranoside (2) and 3-hydroxy-3-(N-acetyl-2-aminoethyl)-6-methoxyindol-2-one (3). The cytotoxi...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE Peganum harmala is used in traditional medicine to treat a number of diseases including cancer. Our preliminary studies show that the alkaloidal extract of PH seed is cytotoxic to several tumor cell lines in vitro and has antitumor effect in a tumor model in vivo. The present investigation was aimed at extending our previous studies in identifying the components i...

The title compound, C(20)H(19)N(3)O, was obtained by condensation of 2,3-dihydro-1H,9H-pyrrolo-[2,1-b]quinazolin-9-one (alkaloid de-oxy-vasicinone, isolated from Peganum Harmala) with 4-(dimethyl-amino)-benzaldehyde in the presence of sodium methoxide. The 2,3-dihydro-1H,9H-pyrrolo-[2,1-b]quinazolin-9-one part of the mol-ecule is roughly planar (r.m.s. deviation = 0.0178 Å) and is essentially c...

Background and Aims: Nitric oxide (NO) has an essential role in inflammation and has been related to pathogenesis and the progress of numerous inflammatory-based diseases, including some cancers. Peganum harmala (P. harmala) is a medicinal plant used for the treatment of numerous diseases such as several infections. Also, anti-inflammatory effects of P. harmala extracts and its derivatives (har...

This study compared the genetic diversity within and among six naturally growing coastal and inland populations of Peganum harmala by using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique. Seven primers generated a total of 63 RAPD bands (loci) of which 60 (95.24%) were polymorphic across all individuals. The genetic diversity of P. harmala at the population level and species level were perce...

A novel antifungal protein, designated as PHP, was isolated from the seeds of Peganum harmala, by cationic exchange chromatography on Resource S column and gel filtration on Sephadex 75 10/300 GL column. PHP was found to form a homodimer of about 16 kDa. Isoelectric focusing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis showed that the isoelectric point of PHP was ∼8.4. The N-terminal 20-amino ac...

Parkinson’s disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders.  There are many documents about the effects of oxidative stress in Parkinson’s disease etiology. Angiotensin II activates NADPH dependent oxidases and causes superoxides formation.  Peganum harmala L. extract, which has angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory effect, is considered to evaluate oxidative stress inhi...