Obesity is the most prevalent disease in the world which poses a serious risk for various chronic diseases. However, currently there are not any therapeutic agents that reduce body weight without causing serious side effects. In order to prevent and/or treat obesity and related diseases through a nutraceutical approach, we created a resveratrol-enriched transgenic rice accumulating 1.4 μg/g of resveratrol in its grain, DJ-526. Feeding of mice with the resveratrol-enriched rice DJ-526 showed excellent anti-obesity effect with reduction of body weights and abdominal fat volumes compared to the control by 20.0% and 31.3%, respectively. Also, the consumption of the resveratrol-enriched rice DJ526 significantly improved the blood lipid profiles and glucose levels in the animal experiments. Our resveratrol-enriched rice DJ-526 rice could provide both safe and convenient way for people with obesity and related diseases without major change of lifestyle or unwanted side effects from medication.

One of the main characteristics of cancer tissues is poor development of neovascularization that results in a limited blood circulation. Because of this phenomenon, it is harder for cancer tissues to diffuse their elevated heat into other parts of the body. The scientific principle of radiofrequency hyperthermia relies on this quality of cancer tissues which with higher temperature becomes more apparent. Despite the obvious necessity to selectively heat the cancer tissue for radiofrequency hyperthermia, a proper thermosensitizer has not been developed until now. Here, we show that transferrin containing ferric ion could be an ideal thermosensitizer for the increased efficiency of radiofrequency hyperthermia. In our result, the ferric ion-enriched cancer tissues dramatically react with 13.56 MHz radiofrequency wave to cause cancer-selective dielectric temperature increment. The overall anticancer efficacy of a 13.56 MHz radiofrequency hyperthermia using transferrin as a thermosensitizer was much higher than the oncotherapeutic efficacy of paclitaxel, successfully eradicating cancer in a tumor-xenografted mouse experiment.

Hepatitis B is one of the most common infectious diseases in the world; more than 350 million people are carriers of hepatitis B virus (HBV). Chronic HBV infection (CHB) leads to liver diseases such as cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and steatosis. Despite its seriousness in terms of public health, the pathogenic mechanism of how CHB leads to liver diseases, especially cirrhosis and steatosis, remains unclear. We studied the role of HBV polymerase (HBp) reverse transcriptase (RT) activity in association with the pathogenesis of liver diseases in CHB by developing transgenic mice expressing HBp or the RT domain of HBp. Thorough pathological, serological, and histological analyses of the transgenic mice, as well as mechanistic studies, were conducted. All of the transgenic mice expressing RT in their livers developed early cirrhosis with steatosis by 18 months of age, and 10% developed HCC. The RT activity of HBp stimulates coordinated proapoptotic and proinflammatory responses involving the caspase‐9, caspase‐3, and caspase‐1 pathways that might lead to the development of cirrhosis, HCC, and steatosis. The animal model described here should prove useful for elucidating the molecular events in the CHB‐induced liver diseases.

The molecular mechanism underlying lifespan extension by resveratrol remains widely discussed. To help study this mechanism, we previously created resveratrol-enriched rice, DJ526, by transferring the resveratrol biosynthesis gene into Dongjin rice. DJ526 accumulates 1.4–1.9 μg g−1 of resveratrol in its grain and can ameliorates age-related deterioration in mice, as compared to control animals, based on assessments of motor coordination, physical strength and cutaneous tissue aging. Here, we present raw data sets, deposited in public repositories, from microarray analysis and physiological data of mice fed with DJ526 and Dongjin rice and treated with resveratrol. We also provide a method to analyze blood serum at micron levels. These data sets may help other researchers find new clues regarding the etiology of the anti-aging process and signaling pathways induced by resveratrol, rice, or DJ526.

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