Backgroud: Pre-eclampsia (PE) is a common pregnancy-induced hypertension disease. Some case–control studies reported the association between vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene polymorphisms (rs3025039, rs2010963) and PE risk. However, these associations were inconsistent in several studies. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis to assess the role of VEGF gene polymorphisms in PE more precisely. Methods: Eligible studies were searched in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Chinese (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and WanFang) databases. Statistical analyses were performed by Stata 12.0 software. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to assess the strength of the association. In addition, subgroup analyses, sensitive analyses and publication bias analyses were performed to further assess this meta-analysis. Results: In total, 21 studies were included in the meta-analysis covering 2018 cases and 2632 controls. There were significant associations between VEGF polymorphisms (rs3025039, rs2010963) and PE risk in the overall populations. In the subgroup analyses, we found that rs3025039 polymorphism was associated with the increased risk of PE among Chinese. As for rs2010963 polymorphism, a significant association was observed in subgroup of Caucasian. Conclusion: The present study suggested that the two VEGF gene polymorphisms (rs3025039, rs2010963) are associated with increased risk of PE in different ethnic groups, which means that the targets may be useful genetic markers for early prediction of PE.

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Alepterolic acid is a natural diterpenoid isolated from Aleuritopteris argentea with potential anti‐cancer activity. In this study, alepterolic acid was modified to construct a series of arylformyl piperazinyl derivatives (3a–3p). The synthesized derivatives were fully characterized with HRMS, NMR, and IR. Four compounds with inhibition rate higher than 30 % at 10 μM (3f, 3n, 3g and 3k) were further measured to obtain the IC50 values against four cancer cell lines, including hepatoma cell lines HepG2, lung cancer cell lines A549, estrogen receptor‐positive cell lines MCF7, and triple‐negative breast cancer (TNBC) cell lines MDA‐MB‐231 by MTT assay. It was found that these compounds were more effective to HepG2 and MDA‐MB‐231 cells, while less toxic to A549 and MCF7 cells, and compound 3n as the most toxic derivatve against MDA‐MB‐231 cell lines, with IC50 value of 5.55±0.56 μM. Trypan blue staining and colony formation assay showed that compound 3n inhibited the growth of MDA‐MB‐231 cells and prevented colony formation. Hoechst staining, flow cytometry and western blot analysis revealed that compound 3n induced caspase‐dependent apoptosis in MDA‐MB‐231 cells. Conclusively, compound 3n was demonstrated to be a potential anti‐cancer lead compound for further investigation.

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