Holmanhensley8801
s has potential for improving therapeutic efficacy and safety of drugs in cancer treatment.Polypeptide-based nanoparticles offer unique advantages from a nanomedicine perspective such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, and stimuli-responsive properties to (patho)physiological conditions. Conventionally, self-assembled polypeptide nanostructures are prepared by first synthesizing their constituent amphiphilic polypeptides followed by postpolymerization self-assembly. Herein, we describe the one-pot synthesis of oxidation-sensitive supramolecular micelles and vesicles. This was achieved by polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) of the N-carboxyanhydride (NCA) precursor of methionine using poly(ethylene oxide) as a stabilizing and hydrophilic block in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). By adjusting the hydrophobic block length and concentration, we obtained a range of morphologies from spherical to wormlike micelles, to vesicles. Remarkably, the secondary structure of polypeptides greatly influenced the final morphology of the assemblies. Surprisingly, wormlike micellar morphologies were obtained for a wide range of methionine block lengths and solid contents, with spherical micelles restricted to very short hydrophobic lengths. Wormlike micelles further assembled into oxidation-sensitive, self-standing gels in the reaction pot. Both vesicles and wormlike micelles obtained using this method demonstrated to degrade under controlled oxidant conditions, which would expand their biomedical applications such as in sustained drug release or as cellular scaffolds in tissue engineering.Photosensitive nanosized metal-organic frameworks (nanoMOFs) with a tunable structure and high porosity have been developed recently as nanophotosensitizers (nanoPSs) for photodynamic therapy (PDT). However, the effect of photodynamic therapy is greatly limited by the fast blood clearance and poor tumor retention of the ordinary nanoPSs. Besides, autophagy, a prosurvival self-cannibalization pathway mediated by autolysosomes, was elevated by cytotoxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced during PDT. Herein, a chloroquine phosphate (CQ)-loaded photosensitive nanoMOF coated by heparin was fabricated for sensitized PDT by increasing the tumor accumulation of nanoPSs and abolishing the self-protective autophagy within cancer cells. After internalization by cancer cells, the encapsulated CQ alkalizes autolysosomes and blocks the postautophagy process, which disarm the vigilant cancer cells irritated by PDT and finally enhance the therapeutic effect. Furthermore, the accompanied antiangiogenesis ability of the heparin coat also helps improve the cancer therapy outcomes. This study would open up new horizons for building heparin-coated nanoMOFs and understanding the role of autophagy in cancer therapy.Cefepime exhibits a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity and thus is a widely used treatment for severe bacterial infections. Adverse effects on the central nervous system (CNS) have been reported in patients treated with cefepime. Current explanation for the adverse neurobehavioral effect of cefepime is mainly attributed to its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and competitively bind to the GABAergic receptor; however, the underlying mechanism is largely unknown. In this study, mice were intraperitoneally administered 80 mg/kg cefepime for different periods, followed by neurobehavioral tests and a brain lipidomic analysis. LC/MS-MS-based metabolomics was used to investigate the effect of cefepime on the brain lipidomic profile and metabolic pathways. Repeated cefepime treatment time-dependently caused anxiety-like behaviors, which were accompanied by reduced locomotor activity in the open field test. Cefepime profoundly altered the lipid profile, acyl chain length, and unsaturation of fatty acids in the corpus striatum, and glycerophospholipids accounted for a large proportion of those significantly modified lipids. In addition, cefepime treatment caused obvious alteration in the lipid-enriched membrane structure, neurites, mitochondria, and synaptic vesicles of primary cultured striatal neurons; moreover, the spontaneous electrical activity of striatal neurons was significantly reduced. Collectively, cefepime reprograms glycerophospholipid metabolism in the corpus striatum, which may interfere with neuronal structure and activity, eventually leading to aberrant neurobehaviors in mice.Microbes are being engineered for an increasingly large and diverse set of applications. However, the designing of microbial genomes remains challenging due to the general complexity of biological systems. Adaptive Laboratory Evolution (ALE) leverages nature's problem-solving processes to generate optimized genotypes currently inaccessible to rational methods. The large amount of public ALE data now represents a new opportunity for data-driven strain design. This study describes how novel strain designs, or genome sequences not yet observed in ALE experiments or published designs, can be extracted from aggregated ALE data and demonstrates this by designing, building, and testing three novel Escherichia coli strains with fitnesses comparable to ALE mutants. These designs were achieved through a meta-analysis of aggregated ALE mutations data (63 Escherichia coli K-12 MG1655 based ALE experiments, described by 93 unique environmental conditions, 357 independent evolutions, and 13 957 observed mutations), which additionally revealed global ALE mutation trends that inform on ALE-derived strain design principles. Such informative trends anticipate ALE-derived strain designs as largely gene-centric, as opposed to noncoding, and composed of a relatively small number of beneficial variants (approximately 6). These results demonstrate how strain design efforts can be enhanced by the meta-analysis of aggregated ALE data.In this paper, we report a stepwise RNA-primed RNA polymerization method for the site-specific incorporation of multiple fluorescent moieties into RNA, mediated by an RNA polymerase. A screen of several RNA polymerases revealed that T7 RNA polymerase was the only one that functioned in the RNA-primed RNA polymerization. In the first fluorescence labeling step, a fluorescent rUthioTP residue was incorporated directly into the RNA using T7 RNA polymerase; the second fluorescence labeling step was performed using a post-labeling strategy directly introducing an rUamiTP residue into RNA, using T7 RNA polymerase, and then reacting with ylidenemalononitrile enamine (P3). The whole process for the site-specific introduction of the multiple labeled moieties was performed through stepwise RNA-primed RNA polymerization. Interestingly, the resulting multiple-labeled RNA exhibited fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between the two fluorescent labels in the RNA. We optimized the FRET-breaking point in the RNA by changing of distance between the two fluorescent labels and then used this property for the detection of the structural change of the RNA. The FRET signal increased in intensity upon the transformation of the RNA from a single-strand structure to the G-quadruplex. This approach for site-specific FRET labeling into RNA using RNA polymerase suggests the possibility of performing other diverse site-specific modifications at predefined positions in RNA.Protonation/deprotonation is the well-recognized mass spectrometric mechanism in matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization of organic molecules but not for metal ions with different oxidation states. We describe herein a soft evaporation and ionization technique for metal ions based on iodination/de-iodination in metal-iodide cluster ionization (MICI). It is not only able to determine identities and oxidation states of metal ions but also reveal spatial distributions and isotope ratios in response to physiological or environmental changes. A long chain alcohol 1-tetradecanol with no functional groups that can absorb laser irradiation was used to cover and prevent samples from direct laser ablation. Upon the irradiation of the third harmonic Nd3+YAG (355 nm, 3 ns), iohexol containing three covalently bonded iodine atoms instantly generates negative iodide ions that can quantitatively form clusters with at least 14 essential metal ions present in plants. The detection limits vary with different metal ions down to low fmol. MICI eliminates the atomization process that obscures metal charges in inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. compound library chemical Because only metal ions can be iodinated with iohexol, interferences from the abundant organic molecules of plants that are confronted by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) are also greatly decreased.
The prognosis of HIV infection dramatically improved after the introduction of triple antiretroviral therapy 25 years ago. Herein, we report the impact of further improvements in HIV management since then, looking at all hospitalizations in persons living with HIV (PLWH) in Spain.
Retrospective study using the Spanish National Registry of Hospital Discharges. Information was retrieved since 1997 to 2018.
From 79,647,783 nationwide hospital admissions recorded during the study period, 532,668 (0.67%) included HIV as diagnosis. The mean age of PLWH hospitalized increased from 33 to 51 years-old (p < 0.001). The rate of HIV hospitalizations significantly declined after 2008. Comparing hospitalizations during the first (1997-2007) and last (2008-2018) decades, the rate of non-AIDS illnesses increased, mostly due to liver disease (from 35.9% to 38.3%), cardiovascular diseases (from 12.4% to 28.2%), non-AIDS cancers (from 6.4% to 15.5%) and kidney insufficiency (from 5.4% to 13%). In-hospital deaths occurred in 5.5% of PLWH, declining significantly over time. Although most deaths were the result from AIDS conditions (34.8%), the most frequent non-AIDS deaths were liver disease (47.1%), cardiovascular events (29.2%), non-AIDS cancers (24.2%) and kidney insufficiency (20.7%).
Hospital admissions in PLWH significantly declined after 2008, following improvements in HIV management and antiretroviral therapy. Non-AIDS cancers, cardiovascular events and liver disease represent a growing proportion of hospital admissions and deaths in PLWH.
Hospital admissions in PLWH significantly declined after 2008, following improvements in HIV management and antiretroviral therapy. Non-AIDS cancers, cardiovascular events and liver disease represent a growing proportion of hospital admissions and deaths in PLWH.
To review the therapeutic effect of acupuncture and moxibustion on allergic rhinitis based on the network Meta-analysis.
The randomized controlled trials of acupuncture and moxibustion for allergic rhinitis were retrieved from the databases, starting from the date of establishment to August 17, 2020, i.e. the PubMed, EMbase, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang and VIP. The traditional Meta-analysis and network Meta-analysis were performed by RevMan5.3 and GeMTC0.14.3.
A total of 50 RCTs were included, including 4260 patients, involving 5 kinds of acupuncture and moxibustion therapies, such as acupuncture, moxibustion, acupoint application, acupoint thread-embedding and auricular point therapy.①In term of total effective rate, acupuncture, moxibustion and acupoint thread-embedding were superior to western medication and auricular point therapy (
<0.05); moxibustion was superior to acupoint application (
<0.05); acupoint thread-embedding was superior to acupoint application (
<0.05). Acupoint thread-embedding was most likely to be the best treatment (
<0.