• Journal of Life Science
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.158-161
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• 1998

An inhibitor of farnesy-protein transferae is known to be a fgood candidate for antitumor agent that block the oncogenic activity of Ras protein . We recently isolated and characterized dihydrotanshinone I from Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge (Danshen), an oriental herb, which has an inhibitory activity of toposimerase I to some cancer cell lines. In order to examine the molecular mechanism of dihydrotanshinone I, we studied the farmesy-Protein Transferase activity by dihydrotanshinone I. As a result, we found that result, we found that dihydrotanshinone I showed inhibitory effect on farnesyl-protein transferase with $IC_{50}$ value of 15 ug/ml. This result suggest that dihydrotanshinone I may be an useful anticancer agent with the inhibitory activity of farnesyl-protein transferase.