Evidence-Based Management of Uterine Fibroids With Botanical Drugs-A Review

Uterine fibroids (UFs) are a common benign gynecological tumor that affect the majority of women over their lifetime. Several pharmacological agents are available to reduce the size of fibroids and ameliorate the symptoms of UF. However, these drugs are expensive and are usually associated with profound side effects. Thus, botanical drugs are gaining attention in this era due to their cost effectiveness with a comparable and more potent therapeutic efficacy while demonstrating lesser adverse effects. The objective of this review is to summarize the available information on the mechanism of various botanical drugs and polyherbal formulations with anti-uterine fibroid activity. A systematic search was performed on botanical drugs with anti-uterine fibroid activity using several search engines, which include PubMed, Google Scholar, and Science Direct. Based on the literatures identified, a total of five botanical drugs and three polyherbal formulations were included and discussed in this review, which yields useful information regarding the mechanism of different botanical drugs and polyherbal formulations in exerting anti-uterine fibroid activity for its potential use as an alternative treatment choice for uterine fibroids.

332 DERIVATION OF BOVINE-INDUCED PLURIPOTENT STEM CELLS BY piggyBac-MEDIATED REPROGRAMMING

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are a seminal breakthrough in stem cell research and are promising for the development of advanced regenerative therapies and farm animal biotechnology. Considering the potential of this technology for both basic and clinical research, it is tempting to extend this research to important livestock species, such as cattle, in which authentic embryonic stem cell lines are yet not available. The first attempts to produce iPS cells from livestock species were made using retro- and lentiviral vectors, which are associated with an increased risk of insertional mutagenesis and which are not removable after reprogramming. Here, we describe a nonviral method for the derivation of bovine iPS cells, employing a piggyBac (PB) transposon system. The reprogramming PB transposon encodes the primate cDNA of 6 core reprogramming factors, OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, MYC, LIN28, and NANOG, separated by self-cleaving 2A peptide sequences and driven by the chimeric CAGGS promoter. The derived bovine iPS line expressed typical endogenous genes (OCT4, SOX2, c-MYC, KLF4, NANOG, REX1, and ALP) by RT-PCR and OCT-4 as well as SSEA-1 and 4 pluripotency-related markers by immunostaining, and it exhibited silencing of exogenous reprograming factors. Moreover, the iPS line showed long-term proliferation (until the 40th passage) under feeder-free culture conditions, differentiated into derivatives of the 3 germ layers in vitro, and formed teratomas (4/6) after subcutaneous injection into immunodeficient nude mice. These results are a major step towards the derivation of authentic bovine iPS cells, and thus facilitate the genetic modifications of the bovine genome.