Biological activity in the repopulating rat spermatocyte after the withdrawal of gossypol treatment. VI. Alteration in nuclear factors for interaction with histone gene promoter

The schiff base of gossypol with 3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24-octaoxa-pentacosylamine complexes and monovalent cations studied by electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry,1H nuclear magnetic resonance, Fourier transform infrared, as well as PM5 semiempirical methods

A Schiff base of gossypol with 3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24-octaoxa-pentacosylamine (GSOB) forms stable complexes with monovalent cations. This process of complex formation was studied by electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry, (1)H-NMR and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy as well as by the PM5 semiempirical method. It was found that GSOB forms 1:6 complexes with Li(+) and Na(+), and 1:4 complexes with K(+) as well as 1:2 complexes with Rb(+) or Cs(+) cations and exists in all these complexes in the enamine-enamine tautomeric form. Moreover, within these complexes only Li(+) cations can fluctuate between the oxygen atoms of the octaoxaalkyl chains. The interactions of Li(+) cations with hydroxyl groups of the gossypol part is also possible. All other cations are much more localized. In the complex of GSOB with protons, a 1:2 stoichiometry is realized. The two protons are localized on the N atoms of the Schiff base, and the complex exists in the imine-imine tautomeric form. The structures of the complexes are calculated by PM5 semiempirical methods and discussed.

Advances in cell separation: recent developments in counterflow centrifugal elutriation and continuous flow cell separation

Cell separation by counterflow centrifugal elutriation (CCE) or free flow electrophoresis (FFE) is performed at lower frequency than cell cloning and antibody-dependent, magnetic or fluorescence-activated cell sorting. Nevertheless, numerous recent publications confirmed that these physical cell separation methods that do not include cell labeling or cell transformation steps, may be most useful for some applications. CCE and FFE have proved to be valuable tools, if homogeneous populations of normal healthy untransformed cells are required for answering scientific questions or for clinical transplantation and cells cannot be labeled by antibodies, because suitable antibodies are not available or because antibody binding to a cell surface would induce the cell reaction which should be investigated on purified cells or because antibodies bound to the surface hamper the use of the isolated cells. In addition, the methods are helpful for studying the biological reasons for, or effects of, changes in cell size and cellular negative surface charge density. Although the value of the methods was confirmed in recent years by a considerable number of important scientific results, activities to further develop and improve the instruments have, unfortunately, declined.

Gossypol: reasons for its failure to be accepted as a safe, reversible male antifertility drug

Following clinical trials conducted in China in the 1970s, gossypol was proposed as a drug for male contraceptive use. This review summarizes the extensive investigations on formal animal toxicology and on the recovery of fertility in men after stopping gossypol treatment which led to the decision by the Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) at the World Health Organization (WHO), that gossypol would not be acceptable as an antifertility drug. It is concluded that the assessment of gossypol reinforces the mandatory requirement that future contraceptive drugs must be developed by the established routes of appropriate animal toxicology and phased clinical studies.

Gossypol-induced apoptotic DNA fragmentation correlates with inhibited protein kinase C activity in spermatocytes

After exposure of cultured rat spermatocytes to gossypol acetic acid for five hours, DNA fragmentation in a ladder pattern was found in the medium and supernatants of cell lysates. The concentrations of gossypol used for the induction of apoptosis ranged from 100 microM to 300 microM. Within this dose range, gossypol was also found to be effective at inhibiting protein kinase C (PKC) activity. This inhibitory effect was demonstrated by measuring the PKC residing in cytosolic and particulate fractions. However, the gossypol-induced inhibition of PKC activity was protected by phorbol 12,13-dibutyrate (PDBu), an activator of PKC. Furthermore, the presence of PDBu prevented gossypol-induced DNA fragmentation. These results suggest that spermatocyte apoptosis induced by gossypol is correlated with the reduction of PKC activity, and that maintenance of PKC basal activity is essential for protecting the spermatocyte from apoptosis.