Biomarker-guided screening of Juzen-taiho-to, an oriental herbal formulation for immunostimulation.

Juzen-taiho-to is an immunostimulatory herbal formulation that is clinically used in East Asia for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. The formulation stimulates various leukocytes, including T, B, and NK cells and macrophages. Although Juzen-taiho-to is known to contain numerous compounds with various pharmacological activities, it is not clear which compounds are responsible for the stimulation of individual cell types.

Immunostimulatory lipid nanoparticles from herbal medicine.

Reproducibility is an important issue in biological characterization of drug candidates and natural products. It is not uncommon to encounter cases in which supposedly the same sample exhibits very different biological activities. During our characterization of macrophage-stimulatory lipids from herbal medicine, it was found that the potency of these lipids could vary substantially from experiment to experiment.

Rediscovery of natural products using genomic tools.

A screening methodology called 'genomic screening' was established to identify natural products that can regulate cellular gene expression. Application of genomic screening to Keishi-bukuryo-gan (KBG), a Japanese herbal medicine formulation, identified a previously unnoticed transcriptional effect by linoleic acid, a known KBG component. The approach opens up a possibility to develop cell-permeable molecular tools for functional genomics research and sets a stage to evaluate the potential of natural products for transcription therapies.

Gene expression profiling of intrinsic thermotolerance in Escherichia coli.

DNA microarrays were employed to compare gene expression in a thermotolerant, nalidixic acid-resistant mutant of Escherichia coli with that of the parental strain. When grown at 37 degrees C, up-regulated genes in the mutant included those coding for multiple antibiotic resistance proteins and enzymes for the degradation of small molecules, whereas among the down-regulated genes were those coding for fimbrial, flagellar, and outer membrane proteins as well as sigma 38. When the mutant grown at 42 degrees C was compared to the mutant grown at 37 degrees C, enhanced expression of several genes coding for flagellar proteins was detected.