Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research Review Chinese herb related molecules of cancer-cell-apoptosis: a minireview of progress between Kanglaite injection and related genes Yun Lu*1, Chang-Sheng Li2 and Qian Dong3,1 BioMed Central Open Access Address: 1Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of Medical College, Qingdao University, No.16 Jiangsu Rd, Qingdao 266003, PR China, 2Center of Cell and Molecular Pathology, Affiliated Hospital of Medical College, Qingdao University, No.16 Jiangsu Rd, Qingdao 266003, PR China and 3Department of Pediatric Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of Medical College, Qingdao University, No.16 Jiangsu Rd, Qingdao 266003, PR China Email: Yun Lu* - cloudylucn@126.com; Chang-Sheng Li - lichangsheng_0803@yahoo.com.cn; Qian Dong - dong.qian@tom.com * Corresponding author Published: 21 August 2008 Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research 2008, 27:31 doi:10.1186/1756-9966-27-31 This article is available from: http://www.jeccr.com/content/27/1/31 Received: 22 June 2008 Accepted: 21 August 2008 © 2008 Lu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Many kinds of Chinese herb had been confirmed to have the character of anti-tumor, clinical reports about anti-tumor effects of Chinese herb had also been found in recent years, but most of the reports were focused on the clinical treatment of effectiveness for Chinese herb, on the other hand, review about Chinese herbal related with molecules on cancer-cell-apoptosis was seldom, many scientists could not believe such kinds of clinical describes about anti-tumor effects for Chinese herb, because these describes were lack of molecular biology evidence. Kanglaite(KLT) injection is an anti-tumor new drug which extracts from Chinese medicine-coix seed with modern advanced pharmaceutical technology, it is also a new biphase extended-spectrum anticancer medicine, the food and drug administration(FDA) of United States also approved a phase II trial of KLT to test its efficacy in treating non-small-cell lung cancer. Some studies show it could inhibit some anti-apoptotic gene and activate some pro-apoptotic gene, its injection solution is one of the new anticancer medicine that can significantly inhibit a various kinds of tumor cells, so it has become the core of research that how to further explore KLT injection to promote tumor cell apoptosis by impacting on related genes. In this review, the relationship between KLT and some tumor cell apoptosis molecules had been discussed and reviewed generally. Review In recent years, with the lucubrate on tumor cell biology and molecular biology, it has been recognized that the occurrence and development of tumor is not only the result of cell proliferation disorders and disdifferentia- tion, but also closely correlated with the abnormal apop- tosis [1,2]. Although abnormal apoptosis can promote the occurrence and development of tumor, we can also treat tumor by promoting apoptosis of cancer cell [3,4]. Thus it has become the new target in oncotherapy by way of inducing apoptosis of cancer cell. Kanglaite(KLT) injec- tionis a diphasic broad-spectrum anti-tumor new drug which has depressant effect on many kinds of tumor cells, it is extracted from the chinese crude drug-coixenolide [5,6] and made use of the latest and most complex mod- ern high technologies in process of preparation [7]. Ani- mal experiments show that KLT mainly block G2+M phase of cell circle, thereby reducing the mitotic division Page 1 of 5 (page number not for citation purposes)