Objective: To study the antimicrobial effectiveness against traditional She medicine-Gardeniae Radix and determine the titer of Gardeniae Radix.Methods: The antibacterial activity of five standard strains(Escherichia coli , Staphylococcus aureus , Pseudomonas aeruginosa , Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger)was investigated.A method for the biological value evaluation of Gardeniae Radix was established by using a turbidity method, and compared with the content of chikusetsu saponin Ⅳa determined by HPLC.Results: The sensitivity of Gardeniae Radix to Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli was high.The recovery of the turbidity method was within the range of 90%-110%, and the reliability limit rate was less than 5%.The content of chikusetsu saponin Ⅳa in Gardeniae Radix was not completely consistent with the result of the bioassay method.Conclusion: The bioassay method established in the experiment can be one of the methods for the quality evaluation of Gardeniae Radix.

To explore the significance of Erbin expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and its relation-ship with patient prognosis. Methods: Erbin expression in a tissue chip containing samples from 299 cases were examined using immu-nohistochemistry; in addition, the relationship between Erbin expression and clinical-pathological parameters and patient survival time were also analyzed. Cox regression was used to predict the risk of clinical-pathological parameters. The mRNA and protein expres-sion of Erbin was also determined in 25 cases with paired ESCC and normal tissues through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and West-ern blot. Results: The expression of Erbin protein and mRNA in ESCC were significantly higher than those of normal esophageal epithe-lium adjacent to cancer (55.2% vs. 0, P<0.05). The high expression of Erbin in ESCC was closely related to TNM stage (64.9% vs. 47.3%, P=0.002) and lymph node metastasis (65.5% vs. 45.0%, P<0.001). Moreover, the high expression of Erbin in ESCC was closely related to poor prognosis (P<0.05). Conclusions: Erbin expression was increased in ESCC and was closely related to poor patient prognosis, which suggested that Erbin may be an important biomarker for the prognosis of cancer patients.