Salinomycin（SAL）,a polyether antibiotic isolated from Streptomyces albus,is widely used as an anticoccidial drug in poultry and other livestock and is furthermore fed to ruminescent animals to improve nutrient absorption and feed efficiency.It has recently been shown to act as a specific inhibitor of cancer stem cells.At present,the price of salinomycin sodium（SAL-Na） is 10 fold lower than that of salinomycin,however,there is no report about the comparison of the inhibitory effects of SAL and SAL-Na on cancer stem cells as well as cancer cells.In the present study,side population cells（SP cells）and non-SP cells （NSP cells）sorted from human breast cancer cell line MCF-7 were chosen as the models of cancer stem cells and cancer cells, respectively.SRB assay was performed to compare the cytotoxicity of SAL and SAL-Na.First of all,SP cells were sorted from MCF-7 cells via FACSDiva flow cytometry.Secondly,the sorted SP cells were identified with the surface makers（CD44~＋/CD24^-） of breast cancer stem cells.Finally,the inhibitory effects of SAL and SAL-Na were evaluated on the sorted SP cells and NSP cells.Results showed that,as compared to breast cancer cells,the inhibitory effect of free SAL or free SAL-Na was more potent in breast cancer stem cells.Furthermore,the inhibitory effects of free SAL and free SAL-Na had no significant difference for the SP cells as well as the NSP cells when they were in the same concentration.Thus,it suggested that salinomycin sodium should be considered as a potential candidate to take the place of salinomycin in cancer stem cells research,due to their similar inhibitory effects on cancer stem cells.
Objective To investigate the effects of pentobarbital anesthesia on nociceptive processing in the medial and lateral pain pathways.Methods Laser stimulation was employed to evoke nociceptive responses in rats under awake or anesthetic conditions.Pain-related neuronal activities were simultaneously recorded from the primary somatosensory cortex （SI） ,ventral posterolateral thalamus （VPL） ,anterior cingulate cortex （ACC） ,and medial dorsal thalamus （MD） with 4 eight-wire microelec-trode arrays.Results Compared with the awake state,pentobarbital anesthesia significantly suppressed the neural activities induced by noxious laser stimulation.Meanwhile,the pain-evoked changes in the neuronal correlations between cortex and thalamus were suppressed in both medial and lateral pain pathways.In addition,the spontaneous firing rates in all the 4 areas were altered （including inhibition and excitation） under the condition of anesthesia.Conclusion The nociceptive processing in the brain can be dramatically changed by anesthesia,which indicates that there are considerable differences in the brain activities between awake and anesthetized states.It is better to employ awake animals for recording neural activity when investigating the sensory coding mechanisms,especially pain coding,in order to obtain data that precisely reflect the physiological state.
