Abstract
Rare sugars are the class of monosaccharide and their derivatives that hasrare presence in nature. In this class there are about 50 kinds of raresugar and one of them is D-Allose. Recent characterization of physiologicalfunction of these rare sugars revealed that D-Allose has a novel inhibitoryeffect on production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) on ischemic nervecells. We also found that D-Allose has a novel inhibitory effect on cellproliferation in HeLa (uterine cervical cancer), OVCAR-3 (ovarian cancer)and Daudi (Burkitt lymphoma) cells. Further, we analyzed these cancer cellstreated with D-Allose using a proteomic approach to identify the proteinsthat may play the important physiological role in apoptosis of cancer cells.Although we detect no change on Coomassie-stained SDS-PAGE of whole celllysates in the presence or absence of D-Allose, we found somepost-translational changes by Western blotting with anti-phosphorylationantibody. Since the various growth factor receptors in cell are controlledby phosphorylation, this may well work with as a single factor or in acombination to have inhibitory effect for the production of active ROS andmay control the cell division cycle that may result in apoptosis of cancercells. The further characterization of various candidate proteins is underway at molecular level by a proteomic approach. [Jpn J Physiol 54 Suppl:S84 (2004)]
