Anticancer Effects of Viscum album Fraxini Extract on Medulloblastoma Cells in vitro.

Background: Mistletoe therapy is frequently administered as a supportive treatment in diverse pediatric cancer entities including brain tumors. Medulloblastoma is the most common brain tumor in childhood. Its high risk to metastasize and its long-term sequelae caused by aggressive chemo- or radiotherapies are still challenging.

Resistance exercise-induced muscle fatigue is not accompanied by increased phosphorylation of ryanodine receptor 1 at serine 2843.

Skeletal muscle fatigue has been shown to be associated with hyperphosphorylation of the ryanodine receptor 1 at serine 2843 (pRyR1Ser2843), due to chronic overloading exercise. We investigated whether pRyR1Ser2843, is a mechanism relevant for muscle fatigue also under acute, in contrast to chronic, muscle loading. 24 male subjects (age: 24,8±3,8; height: 182,8±7,2 cm; weight: 82,5±9,9 kg) were evenly (n = 6) assigned to the following four different resistance exercise (RE) groups: hypertrophy- (HYP), strength endurance- (SE), maximum power- (MAX) at the subjects' 10, 25 and 3 repetition maximum, respectively, and low intensity (LI) RE with 70% of the 10 repetition maximum.

Quality of life, immunomodulation and safety of adjuvant mistletoe treatment in patients with gastric carcinoma - a randomized, controlled pilot study.

Background: Mistletoe (Viscum album L.) extracts are widely used in complementary cancer therapy. Aim of this study was to evaluate safety and efficacy of a standardized mistletoe extract (abnobaVISCUM(®) Quercus, aVQ) in patients with gastric cancer.

Assessment of extracts from mistletoe (Viscum album) for herb-drug interaction by inhibition and induction of cytochrome P450 activities.

Three commercially available extracts from mistletoe (Viscum album L.) grown on ash tree (abnobaVISCUM(®) Fraxini 20 mg), on fir (abnobaVISCUM(®) Abietis 20 mg), and on pine (abnobaVISCUM(®) Pini 20 mg) were tested in vitro for their potential to interfere with the major drug metabolizing cytochromes P450 by hepatocyte viability, by inhibition of cytochromes P450 1A2, 2A6, 2B6, 2C8, 2C9, 2C19, 2D6, 2E1 and 3A4, and by the induction of cytochromes P450 1A2, 2B6, 2C9, 2E1 and 3A4. As the three extracts are produced from mistletoe plants belonging to three different subspecies of Viscum album L.

Quality of life in breast cancer patients during chemotherapy and concurrent therapy with a mistletoe extract.

Background: The effects of standardized aqueous mistletoe extracts on Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) of tumor patients needs further evaluation.

Methods: in this non-interventional, prospective clinical investigation the longitudinal course of Quality of Life of 270 breast cancer patients during adjuvant chemotherapy and mistletoe therapy with abnobaVISCUM(®) Mali was investigated. HRQoL was measured 4 times by self-assessment with the QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BR23 questionnaire of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC): at the beginning of mistletoe- and chemotherapy, 4 weeks later, at the end of the chemotherapy and 4 weeks after finishing chemotherapy.

Pharmacokinetics of natural mistletoe lectins after subcutaneous injection.

Purpose: Knowledge of natural mistletoe lectins (nML) pharmacokinetics can be regarded as essential for further rational studies with mistletoe preparations. Studies with intravenous application of a recombinant type II ribosome inactivating protein (rML) analogous to nML revealed a short half-life of about 13 min in cancer patients. This open-label, phase I, monocenter clinical trial was performed in order to describe the pharmacokinetics of nML.

Rationally engineered therapeutic proteins with reduced immunogenicity.

Chronic administration of protein therapeutics may elicit unacceptable immune responses to the specific protein. Our hypothesis is that the immunogenicity of protein drugs can be ascribed to a few immunodominant helper T lymphocyte (HTL) epitopes, and that reducing the MHC binding affinity of these HTL epitopes contained within these proteins can generate drugs with lower immunogenicity. To test this hypothesis, we studied the protein therapeutic erythropoietin (Epo).

CD49d overexpression and T cell autoimmunity.

D10.G4.1 (D10) cells, a murine conalbumin-reactive Th2 cell line, made to overexpress the beta(2) integrin LFA-1 by pharmacological manipulation or by transfection become autoreactive and are capable of inducing in vivo autoimmunity.

Unexpected effects of a heterozygous dnmt1 null mutation on age-dependent DNA hypomethylation and autoimmunity.

DNA methylation modifies gene expression. Methylation patterns are established during ontogeny, but they change with aging, usually with a net decrease in methylation. The significance of this change in T cells is unknown, but it could contribute to autoimmunity, senescence, or both.

Effects of somatostatin on luminal transit and absorption of nutrients in the proximal gut of minipigs.

A discrepancy exists on the effects of somatostatin on the absorption of nutrients: in humans, absorption was found to be reduced, whereas in rats no effects were observed. However, intestinal absorption might be influenced by the transit rate of contents. This was not considered in previous studies.