Magnetic propelled hydrogel microrobots for actively enhancing the efficiency of lycorine hydrochloride to suppress colorectal cancer.

Research and development in the field of micro/nano-robots have made significant progress in the past, especially in the field of clinical medicine, where further research may lead to many revolutionary achievements. Through the research and experiment of microrobots, a controllable drug delivery system will be realized, which will solve many problems in drug treatment. In this work, we design and study the ability of magnetic-driven hydrogel microrobots to carry Lycorine hydrochloride (LH) to inhibit colorectal cancer (CRC) cells. We have successfully designed a magnetic field driven, biocompatible drug carrying hydrogel microsphere robot with Fe3O4 particles inside, which can achieve magnetic field response, and confirmed that it can transport drug through fluorescence microscope. We have successfully demonstrated the motion mode of hydrogel microrobots driven by a rotating external magnetic field. This driving method allows the microrobots to move in a precise and controllable manner, providing tremendous potential for their use in various applications. Finally, we selected drug LH and loaded it into the hydrogel microrobot for a series of experiments. LH significantly inhibited CRC cells proliferation in a dose- and time-dependent manner. LH inhibited the proliferation, mobility of CRC cells and induced apoptosis. This delivery system can significantly improve the therapeutic effect of drugs on tumors.

Steam activation of porous concave polymer nanospheres for high-efficient chromium and cadmium removal.

The issue of heavy metal contamination in water is a global concern, and the development of highly efficient adsorbent materials is crucial for the removal and detoxification of heavy metals. Polymer-based materials have emerged as a promising class of adsorbents due to their ability to capture heavy metal pollutants and reduce them to less toxic forms. The limited surface area of conventional polymer adsorbents makes them less effective for high-capacity adsorption. Herein, we present a low-temperature steam activation approach to address this challenge. This activation approach leads to a remarkable increase of over 20 times in the surface area of concave aminophenol-formaldehyde (APF) polymer nanospheres (from 45 to 961 m2/g) while preserving their reductive functional groups. The activated concave APF nanospheres were evaluated for their adsorption capabilities towards two typical heavy metal ions (i.e., Cr(VI) and Cd(II)) in aqueous solutions. The maximum adsorption capacities achieved were 1054 mg g-1 for Cr(VI) and 342 mg g-1 for Cd(II), which are among the highest performances reported in the literature and are much higher than the capacities of the non-activated APF nanospheres. Additionally, approximately 71.5 % of Cr(VI) was simultaneously reduced to Cr(III) through the benzenoid amine pathway during adsorption, highlighting the crucial role of the steam activation strategy in enhancing the capability of polymer adsorbents.

Synergistic anti-tumor effects of arsenic trioxide and blue LED irradiation on human osteosarcoma.

Arsenic trioxide (ATO) has been well recognized as an anti-tumor agent for various human cancers. Recently, the blue light emitting diodes (LEDs)-based therapy has also been demonstrated to be potential therapeutic strategies for several cancers. However, the combination effects of ATO and blue LED on tumor suppression are still unclear. In this study, we determined whether combination of ATO and blue LED irradiation at 470 nm in wavelength exhibited superior anti-tumor activity in human osteosarcoma (OS). We observed that combination treatments of ATO and blue LED much more significantly decreased the percentages of proliferative cells, and increased apoptotic rate compared with any single treatments in U-2 OS cells. Furthermore, we found suppression of cell migration and invasion were much more pronounced in ATO plus blue LED treated group than single treated groups. Moreover, reactive oxygen species (ROS) assay and immunostaining of γ-H2A.X and p53 indicated that the combined treatments resulted in further markedly increases in ROS accumulation, DNA damage and p53 activity. Taken together, our study demonstrated synergistical anti-tumor effects of combined treatments of ATO and blue LED on human OS cells, which were associated with an increased ROS accumulation, DNA damaged mediated p53 activation.

[Adsorption characteristics of Cu2+ onto the polyvinylidene fluoride blending modified membrane].

Using the combination method of thermally induced polymerization technique and phase inversion blending process, a novel polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) blending modified membrane with ion-exchanging property, was prepared. The PVDF modified membrane was characterized by XPS, XRD, SEM and FTIR. The adsorption property, adsorption isotherm and batch sorption kinetics of Cu2+ by the PVDF modified membrane were studied. The results indicate that the adsorption processes for Cu2+ are found to follow the pseudo-second-order kinetics equation. And the isotherm of adsorption of Cu2+ by the modified membrane is good agreement with that of Langmuir isotherm model. The values of the mean free energies of the adsorption process are found to be between 8 and 16 kJ/mol, which shows that the adsorption mechanism of the PVDF modified membrane is an ion-exchange process. The value of deltaH0 is > 0, deltaG0 is < 0, and deltaS0 is > 0, which shows that the adsorption of the PVDF modified membrane is a spontaneous and endothermic process. The experimental data also show that the PVDF modified membrane possesses an excellent adsorption/desorption property. The adsorption capacity of Cu2+ onto the modified membrane in the synthesized Cu2+ solution and the sewage water is more than 0.025 mg/cm2 and 0.015 mg/cm2, respectively, and its desorption efficiency is still beyond to 95%, after four adsorption/desorption processes. It can be found that the PVDF modified membrane can be reused almost without any significant loss in the adsorption performance. PVDF modified membrane can be used for the recovery of metal traces and polishing of treated effluents containing heavy metals.