arglabin

Arglabin is a new antineoplastic agent launched in Russia for the treatment of a variety of cancers. It is a sesquiterpene gamma-lactone extracted from Artemisia glabella, a plant from Kazakstan; it was first developed in Kazakstan followed by US and other countries as an ethical pharmaceutical. Arglabin can be obtained by resin extraction from A.glabella, purification by chromatography and finally recrystallization. Arglabin is a potent and selective inhibitor of farnesyl transferase, an enzyme critical to the function of the Ras oncogene in cancer cell reproduction. It showed a strong Inhibitory effect against tumor cells proliferation in in vitro models of transformed mouse hepatocytes and splenocytes. This cytotoxic effect against tumor cells was 50-100 times higher than that on intact cells. In many patients with various cancers, Arglabin was shown to stop or inhibit the tumour development, alone or in combination with other anticancer agents, and was reportedly well tolerated with few sideeffects. Promising response rates were also reported with Arglabin after treating other 《difficult-to-treat cancers》 such as breast, ovarian, lung or colon cancers.