The "Controversial Cundurango Cure": Medical professionalization and the global circulation of drugs.

This article examines the medical and political discussions regarding a controversial medicinal bark from Ecuador - cundurango - that was actively sponsored by the Ecuadorian government as a new botanical cure for cancer in the late nineteenth century United States and elsewhere. The article focuses on the commercial and diplomatic interests behind the public discussion and advertising techniques of this drug. It argues that diverse elements - including the struggle for positioning scientific societies and the disapproval of the capacities of Ecuadorian doctors, US abolitionist history, regional and local political struggles - played a role in the quackery accusations against cundurango and its promoters.

High-mobility-group box nuclear factors of Plasmodium falciparum.

In eukaryotes, the high-mobility-group (HMG) nuclear factors are highly conserved throughout evolution and are divided into three families, including HGMB, characterized by an HMG box domain. Some HMGB factors are DNA structure specific and preferentially interact with distorted DNA sequences, trigger DNA bending, and hence facilitate the binding of nucleoprotein complexes that in turn activate or repress transcription. In Plasmodium falciparum, two HMGB factors were predicted: PfHMGB1 and PfHMGB2.