Aberrant activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway promotes osteosarcoma tumorigenesis and metastasis. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that osteosarcoma progression may be delayed by disrupting the Wnt/β-catenin pathway using small molecule inhibitors such as curcumin and PKF118-310. Effective inhibitions of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway by curcumin and PKF118-310 in osteosarcoma cells were shown by the suppression of both intrinsic and activated β-catenin/Tcf transcriptional activities using luciferase reporter assays. Western blot analysis revealed that there was no change in the amount of cytosolic β-catenin, although nuclear β-catenin was markedly reduced by treatment with either compounds. We next performed wound healing and Matrigel invasion assays and observed a dose-dependent decrease in osteosarcoma cell migration and invasion with curcumin and PKF118-310 treatment. Overexpression of the wild-type β-catenin plasmid in osteosarcoma cells resulted in enhanced cell invasiveness but this effect was significantly overcome by curcumin. Gelatin zymography and Western blotting showed that reduced cell invasion with curcumin and PKF118-310 treatment correlated with the activity and protein level of matrix metalloproteinase-9 under conditions of intrinsic or extrinsic Wnt/β-catenin activation. Using cell apoptosis assay and cell cycle analysis, we further showed that the anti-proliferative effect of PKF118-310 is attributed to PKF118-310-induced apoptosis and G2/M phase arrest. Lastly, we observed that these anti-cancer effects correlated with the decreased expression of cyclin D1, c-Myc and survivin. Our findings strongly suggest that curcumin and PKF118-310 have great therapeutic potential for the treatment of osteosarcoma.

At present, metabolite profiling is of growing importance in herbal medicine fields such as breeding, formulation, quality control and clinical trials. This preliminary study indicated that ultra-performance liquid chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC/TOFMS)-based metabolomics allows direct detection of down-stream derivatives of metabolites, arising from the herbal formulation process. This analytical approach allows the discrimination and tentative authentication of unique biomarkers related to different herbal extracts using unsupervised multivariate principal component analysis (PCA). The tentative identification of biomarkers is complemented significantly by the accurate mass measurement of TOFMS and the high resolution and high retention time reproducibility rendered by UPLC. The application of this approach in herbal extract discrimination and ginsenoside biomarker discovery of raw and steamed Panax notoginseng (Burk.) F.H. Chen is demonstrated and discussed.

A strong TrxR inhibitory character correlated to the antiproliferative potency is attributed to structural features that include an α,β-unsaturated carbonyl moiety centered in a DPPen or DPPro pharmacophore bearing hydroxyl and fluorine substitutions.

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This paper reports an application of the combined FEM analysis and Taguchi's DOE method to the parameter optimization of a magnetic recording media. Effects of a soft magnetic keeper layer on the performance of the magnetic recording media disk are analysed using FEM. Optimization of several key parameters using Taguchi method is performed to maximise the desirable characteristics which are brought about by this keeper layer. This application example shows that the combined approach is an effective and efficient tool for parameter optimization of a non‐linear magnetic field system.