By means of TLC-densitomery, the contents of oleanolic acid extracted from the fruits of Ligustrum lucidum were determined to be 8.04% (g/g) in the unriped fruit collected in August and 2.73% (g/g) in riped fruit gathered in December. This result showed that the oleanolic acid content in fructus L. Iucidum decreases gradually with growing until the fruit is fully riped.

With the wide use of azoles,drug tolerance and cross tolerance of Candida albicands has seriously hampered the clinical treatments of Candida albicands.New antifungal agents(potent and effective) have been developed over the past years based on the discovery of many new target sites of Candida albicands.For example,Echinocandins(caspofungin and micafungin),aiming at the cell wall of Candida albicands,showed strong antifungal activities to fluconazole resistant candidas and fungal biofilm.Moreover,because ?-glucan synthase does not exist on the cell membrane of mammalian cells,Echinocandins has a low toxicity and a promising clinical future.Though the mechanism of Histatin(targeting fungal membrane) is not clear,it has strong activity not only on candida resistant of polyene and azole,but also to Candida parapsilosis,Candida krusei and Cryptococcus neoformans.Berberine and Ocimum gratissimum L.were also found to have prominent anti-fungi activities.Berberine extract can intensively inhibit 24-SMT in a dose-depended manner;besides,it has more potent inhibitory activity against the growth of mycelia than against that of yeast.Various new methods can be used to increase the susceptibility of Candida albicands to antifungal agents,such as altering fungi membrane composition,changing some genes,adopting the photodynamic inactivation method,employing hypersensitization agents and combining antifungal agents.This article reviews the newly-developed antifungal agents and newly-proposed target sites of Candida albicands.

Cap1p, encoded by CAP1, is a basic region-leucine zipper (bZip) transcription factor in Candida albicans. It has been proven to play important roles in both drug resistance and oxidative stress. Within the AP-1 family, Cap1p belongs to the same subgroup which also includes Yap1p, Yap2p, and Pap1p. The function of Cap1p is regulated by a nuclear localization mechanism. In recent years, some target genes of Cap1p have been discovered and the differences as well as similarities between Cap1p and Yap1p have been revealed. However, the role of Cap1p in the drug resistance of Candida albicans still needs to be further investigated. Currently drug resistance and oxidative stress are the 2 focuses in the research of fungal pathogens, making Cap1p very important in the future study. The authors have been involved in Cap1p research for a long time and this review introduces the current progress in the area.

The incidence of candidiasis caused by Candida albicans has increased dramatically in recent years. With the widespread use of antifungal agents, the emergence of drug resistant strains pose a major challenge to drug treatment. The overexpression of membrane proteins functioning as drug efflux pumps is one of the main mechanisms for multidrug resistance of Candida albicans. Membrane transporters associated with drug resistance in Candida albicans are reviewed in this article.

Objective:To study the effects of several herbal medicines on SMMC-7721 liver cancer cells with Fourier transform infrared spectrometer(FTIR). Methods: FTIR was employed to determine the infrared spectra(IRs) of SMMC-7721 liver cancer cells cultivated for 20 h with the extracts of Spica prunellae, Herba houttuyniae, Radix bupleuri and Herba artemisiae scopariae. Cluster analysis of IRs was also performed. Results: IR spectral parameters such as band shape, intensity and frequency of the blank, control and herbal-extract-treated cells were compared. There existed obvious blue shift of ? s(PO 2 -), ? as (PO 2 -) bands, red shift of ? as (CH 3), ?(CH 2) bands on the herbal-extract-treated cells IRs. The decreasing ratio of ? as (CH 3) to ? s(CH 2) peak intensity and the increasing ratio of ? s(PO 2 -) to ?(N-H) peak area indicated the destructive effect of herbal extracts on the membrane structure of SMMU-7721 cells and inhibitory effect on the DNA replication respectively. Cluster analysis successfully discriminated the herbal-extract-treated cells from the blank cells and the liver-oriented medicines from the non-liver-oriented medicine. Conclusion: FTIR provides another fast and effective approach to analyze the changes of cells treated with Chinese herbal medicines, which may help to illuminate the functional mechanism of Chinese herbal medicines.

ATP binding cassette transporter (ABCT),a membrane transporting protein existing in mammalian, bacterial, fungal and many other types of cells, is correlated with multidrug resistance in many cells. To date 10 ABCT have been described in Candida albicans , but only CDR1 and CDR2 genes were associated with multidrug resistance. Moreover, their encoding proteins Cdr1p and Cdr2p have many functions such as efflux pump and phospholipid translocator. The progress in the study of Cdr1p and Cdr2p proteins mediating multidrug resistance in Candida albicans was summarized in the paper.

Abstract: Our previous work revealed berberine can significantly enhance the susceptibility of fluconazole against fluconazole-resistant Candida albicans, which suggested that berberine has synergistic antifungal activity with fluconazole. Preliminary SAR of berberine needs to be studied for the possibility of investigating its target and SAR, improving its drug-likeness, and exploring new scaffold. In this work, 13-substitutited benzyl berberine derivatives and N-benzyl isoquinoline analogues were synthesized and characterized by 1H NMR and MS. Their synergetic activity with fluconazole against fluconazole-resistant Candida albicans was evaluated in vitro. The 13-substitutited benzyl berberine derivatives 1a-1e exhibited comparable activity to berberine, which suggested that the introduction of functional groups to C-13 can maintain its activity. The N-benzyl isoquinolines, which were designed as analogues of berberine with its D ring opened, exhibited lower activity than berberine. However, compound 2b, 2c, and 4b showed moderate activity, which indicated that berberine may be deconstructed to new scaffold with synergistic antifungal activity with fluconazole. The results of our research may be helpful to the SAR studies on its other biological activities.

The target of rapamycin ( TOR) , a Ser/Thr protein kinase of PIKKs ( phosphatidylinositol kinase-related kinases ) , is the central factor of a highly conserved signaling pathway in eukaryotes , and regulates cell growth in response to nutrients , hor-mones, and stresses.It controls temporal growth by activating anabolic processes such as translation , ribosome biogenesis , protein syn-thesis, transportation of amino acid and metabolic enzymes .The advances in TOR pathway in the most pervasive human fungal patho-gen Candida albicans.

Hepatotoxicity is one of the most common adverse reactions during anti -hyperlipidemia treatment .Mechanisms of anti-hyperlipidemia drug-induced hepatotoxicity are not clear yet , but most of the toxic reactions are dose-related hypersensitivity and could be released after drug withdrawal .It is accepted that clinical risk factors for the development of hepatotoxicity during anti -hyper-lipidemia treatment are high age and chronic illnesses .Treatment of anti-hyperlipidemia drug-induced hepatotoxicity has not been uni-fied and most of the treatments are non-specific and symptomatic .Researching hypotoxicity and hepatoprotection antihyperlipidemia drug, especially TCM and pharmaceutics will become a promising direction .