Casual associations between blood metabolites and colon cancer.

Background: Limited knowledge exists regarding the casual associations linking blood metabolites and the risk of developing colorectal cancer.

Aim: To investigate causal associations between blood metabolites and colon cancer.

Methods: The study utilized a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to investigate the causal impact of 486 blood metabolites on colorectal cancer.

Effect of betulinic acid on the regulation of Hiwi and cyclin B1 in human gastric adenocarcinoma AGS cells.

Aim: To investigate the effect of betulinic acid (BA) on the proliferation, apoptosis and cell cycle of gastric adenocarcinoma cell AGS in vitro and the underlying mechanism.

Methods: The effect of BA on the proliferation of AGS cells was measured by using 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium (MTT) assay. Apoptosis was analyzed by using Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)/propidium iodide (PI) double-labeled flow cytometry (FCM) and Hoechst 33258 staining.

[Effect of betulinic acid on inducing apoptosis of human multiple myeloma cell line RPMI-8226].

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of betulinic acid on inducing apoptosis of human multiple myeloma RPMI-8226 cell line. The inhibitory effect of betulinic acid on proliferation and its inducing apoptosis effect, influence on cell cycle and induced morphological changes of RPMI-8226 were evaluated by MTT, flow cytometry Annexin-V/PI double staining, flow cytometry with PI staining and fluorescence microscopy with Hoechst33258 staining, respectively. The transcription level changes of bcl-xl gene and caspase 3 which are two kinds of apoptosis related protein gene were determined by RT-PCR.