Mechanisms of Antitumor Activity of Aqueous Extracts from Chinese Herbs

• Published in: Japanese Journal of Pharmacology 1989, Vol.49 (3), p.423-431
• Main Authors: Hiroshi MORI, Qiang XU, Osami SAKAMOTO, Yuki UESUGI, Akihide KODA, Itsuo NISHIOKA
• Format: Article
• Language: Japanese
• ISSN: 0021-5198

Previously we reported the antitumor activity of 4 kinds of Chinese herbs： A. capillaris, S. doederleinii A. macrocephala and S. subprostrata. Evidence has been also presented that A. capillaris shows the activity mainly through a direct tumoricidal action and the others display the activity through the enhancement of tumor-immune response. The present results are as follows： A. capillaris did not affect Meth A tumor-neutralizing activity (Winn's assay) in spleen cells of BALB/c mice bearing the primary tumor. The other herbs enhanced the activity on days 10 and 15 and prevented the decay of the activity on day 20 after the Meth A tumor transplantation. However, none of them enhanced the local graft versus host reaction (GvH R) induced in CBF_1 mice by spleen cells of BALB/c mice. A. capillaris hardly affected the humoral antibody formation against sheep red blood cells in mice. On the contrary, the other 3 herbs enhanced the formation. Blast transformation of murine lymphocytes with PHA-P or LPS was suppressed by 10^-5 to 10^-4 g/ml of A. capillaris. A. macrocephala enhanced the response by LPS. It should be noted that A. capillaris showed no immunosuppressive action in spite of having a direct tumoricidal action in vitro. Further investigations will be required on the latter 3 herbs to clarify the relationship between their humoral immunity-stimulating activity and their tumor immunity-enhancing activity.