• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.16
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• pp.6963-6966
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• 2015

Background: During the past few years, Hesa-A, a herbal-marine mixture, has been used to treat cancer as an alternative medicine in Iran. Based on a series of studies, it is speculated that Hesa-A possesses special cytotoxic effects on invasive tumors. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the selective anticancer effects of Hesa-A on several cancer cell lines with different metastatic potential. Materials and Methods: Hesa-A was prepared in normal saline as a stock solution of 10 mg/ml and further diluted to final concentrations of $100{\mu}/ml$, $200{\mu}g/ml$, $300{\mu}g/ml$ and $400{\mu}g/ml$. MTT-based cytotoxicity assays were performed with A549 (lung non small cancer), MCF-7 (breast adenocarcinoma), SKOV3 (ovarian cancer), and PC-3 (prostate adenocarcinoma) cells. Results: All treated cancer cells showed significant (P<0.01) or very significant (P<0.0001) differences in comparison to negative control at almost all of the tested doses ($100-400{\mu}g/ml$). At the lower dose ($100{\mu}g/ml$), Hesa-A reduced cell viability to 66%, 45.3%, 35.5%, 33.2% in SKOV3, A549, PC-3 and MCF-7 cells, respectively. Moreover, at the highest dose ($400{\mu}g/ml$), Hesa-A resulted in 88.5%, 86.6%, 84.9% and 79.3% growth inhibition in A549, MCF-7, PC-3 and SKOV3 cells, respectively. Conclusions: Hesa-A exert potent cytotoxic effects on different human cancer cells, especially those with a high metastatic potential.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.16
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• pp.6947-6951
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• 2015

Background: Oral carcinoma (OC) remains one of the most difficult malignancies to cure. Hesa-A is an Iranian herbal-marine compound that has shown promising anti-tumor properties against various human tumors. However, its mechanism of action remains to be addressed. The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of two doses of Hesa-A on mRNA expression of erb$\backslash$b2 as a main prognosticator tumor marker for OC in an animal model. Materials and Methods: A total of 60 rats were randomly divided into 5 groups of 12 animals each. Rats in carcinoma groups received 0, 250 and 500mg/kg body weight doses of Hesa-A 3 times a day. The other two groups were considered as treated and untreated control groups. At the end of the experiment, animals were sacrificed and tongue tissues subjected to H and E staining and real time PCR. Results: Our results showed that compared to the control group, erb$\backslash$b2 was over-expressed ~ 30% in the carcinoma group. After treatment with 250mg/kg and 500mg/kg body weight of Hesa-A, erb$\backslash$b2 levels dropped by 24.1% and 3.4 % respectively compared to the control carcinoma group (p<0.01, p<0.0001). Moreover, there was a significant relation between erb$\backslash$b2 mRNA content and observed pathological changes in studied groups (p<0.05). Conclusions: These data provide insight into mechanism(s) by which Hesa-A may improve clinical outcome of oral carcinoma by affecting oncogene erb$\backslash$b2 expression and suggest Hesa-A as an effective chemotherapeutic agent in treatment of HER+tumors.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.4169-4172
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• 2015

Background: Oral carcinoma (OC) remains as one of the most difficult malignancies to cure. Hesa-A is an Iranian herbal-marine compound that has shown promising anti-tumor properties on various human cancer cells, although the mechanisms of action remain to be addressed. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of two doses of Hesa-A on mRNA expression of p53 as a main prognosticator of OC. Materials and Methods: 60 rats were randomly divided into 5 groups of 12 animals each. Rats in carcinoma groups received 0, 250 and 500 mg/kg body weight of Hesa-A three times a day. The two other groups considered as treated and untreated healthy groups. At the end of experiment, animals were sacrificed and tongue tissues subjected to H and E staining and real time PCR. Results: Our results indicated that compared to healthy group, p53 over expressed ~ 40% in untreated carcinoma group. After treatment with 250mg/kg and 500mg/kg body weights of Hesa-A, p53 level dropped by 53.4% and 13.6 %, respectively, compared to untreated carcinoma group (p<0.05, p<0.0001). Moreover, there was a significant relation between p53 mRNA content and observed pathological changes in studied groups (p<0.05). Conclusions: These data provide insights into the mechanism(s) by which Hesa-A improves clinical outcome of oral carcinoma by modulation of p53 expression.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.643-650
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• 2009

Two metabolism trials were conducted with 24 wether lambs to investigate the effects of feeding crab meal and other protein supplements on N utilization, digestibility and Ca and P balance in sheep. The lambs (avg. BW, 25 kg) were randomly allotted to eight diets in each of two trials. The supplements were: i) none, negative control (NC); ii) soybean meal (SBM), control; iii) supplement based on industrial byproducts of both plant and animal origin (IPA); iv) experimental supplement based on byproducts of animal origin (ESA); v) hydrolyzed supplement No 4. (HESA); vi) commercial supplement based on animal protein (CS), $Pro-Lak^{(R)}$ vii) crab meal (CM); and viii) urea (U). The supplements supplied 33% of the total dietary N (CP, 9.8%; DM basis). Lambs fed the NC diet had lower (p<0.05) DM and OM digestibility. Lower (p<0.05) apparent absorption of N was recorded for the lambs fed the HESA and NC diets. Sheep fed CM had lower Ca absorption compared to SBM. Highest (p<0.05) P absorption was observed for lambs fed CS and CM and lowest for U and NC diets. Sheep fed CM had higher (p<0.05) total VFA concentration (65.7 ${\mu}mol/ml$), compared to those fed ESA, CS, and NC diets (47.3, 49.8, and 49.5 ${\mu}mol/ml$, respectively). Highest (p<0.05) ruminal $NH_3$ N (29.6 mg/dl) was observed in lambs fed the U diet, while those fed the NC diet had the lowest (p<0.05) average value (7.66 mg/dl). Lambs fed the U diet had the highest (p<0.05) blood urea N (10.67 mg/dl). The present study showed that N utilization of diets supplemented with experimental supplements based on feather meal and blood meal; commercial supplement based on animal protein, $Prolak^{(R)}$ supplement based on plant protein and blood meal; and crab meal are comparable with that of soybean meal.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.104-111
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• 1977

This study was carried out in order to know the ecological variation and yield factors under the Korea weater with the 25 sunflower varieties which have been introduced from abroad recently. As the results of this of this study we can conclude that high yield and high oil content varieties seemed to have the short period comparatively from planting to head visible and to have long period from flowering to maturity.