Oligosaccharides from Asparagus cochinchinensis for ameliorating LPS-induced acute lung injury in mice.

Asparagi radix is an edible herb with medicinal properties and is now widely used in clinical applications for improving pulmonary inflammation. However, the lung-protective effect and the active constituents of Asparagi radix are yet to be elucidated. Herein, the potential pulmonary protective effect of the oligosaccharides of Asparagi radix was investigated. We firstly identified eighteen oligosaccharides with different degrees of polymerization from Asparagi radix using HPLC-QTOF MS. Oligosaccharides were analysed for 20 samples of Asparagi radix collected from various regions in China using HILIC-ELSD and were found to stably exist in this herb. In this study, we found that AROS significantly reduced NO production and effectively down-regulated the mRNA expression of IL-6, IL-1ß and TNF-α in RAW 264.7 cells, thereby reducing the inflammatory response induced by LPS. AROS also inhibited LPS-stimulated intracellular ROS production. A murine model of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced acute lung injury was used to evaluate the in vivo anti-inflammatory and lung protective efficacies of AROS. AROS ameliorated the damage to the pulmonary cellular architecture pathological injury and lung edema. AROS significantly decreased the levels of cytokines IL-6, TNF-α and IL-1ß; the levels of MPO and MDA; and superoxide dismutase consumption in vivo. This effect of oligosaccharides can explain the traditional usage of Asparagus cochinchinensis as a tonic medicine for respiratory problems, and oligosaccharides from Asparagi radix used as a natural ingredient can play an important role in protecting lung injury.

Photosensitizers with multiple degradation modes for efficient and postoperatively safe photodynamic therapy.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is emerging as a powerful tool for cancer treatment due to its unique advantages in terms of noninvasive and spatiotemporal selectivity. However, the residue of photosensitizers (PSs), which usually lead to thorny post-treatment side effects after photodynamic therapy (PDT), is one of bottlenecks for clinical translation. Herein, PSs with multiple degradation modes are developed to solve this issue. Upon 660 nm laser excitation, PSs can produce different types of reactive oxygen species (ROS), in which 1O2 and O2·- could kill the cancer cells, while ·OH could oxide the PSs themselves for photodegradation. After PDT, the residual few number of PSs could be further oxidized by endogenous ROS for biodegradation, and the degradation products could be further excreted by urine. This process therefore solves the slow-metabolism issue of traditional PSs. Among them, SQSe demonstrates the highest killing efficiency with best degradation ability, as confirmed by both in vitro and in vivo results. The postoperative safety of SQSe is further verified by assessment on in vivo artificially induced post-operative side effects.

Chinese expert recommendations on management of hepatocellular carcinoma during COVID-19 pandemic: a nationwide multicenter survey.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to investigate the work status of clinicians in China and their management strategy alteration for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A nationwide online questionnaire survey was conducted in 42 class-A tertiary hospitals across China. Experienced clinicians of HCC-related specialties responded with their work status and management suggestions for HCC patients during the pandemic. RESULTS: 716 doctors responded effectively with a response rate of 60.1%, and 664 were included in the final analysis. Overall, 51.4% (341/664) of clinicians reported more than a 60% reduction of the regular workload and surgeons declared the highest proportion of workload reduction. 92.5% (614/664) of the respondents have been using online medical consultation to substitute for the "face-to-face" visits. Adaptive adjustment for the treatment strategy for HCC was made, including the recommendations of noninvasive and minimally invasive treatments such as transcatheter arterial chemoembolization for early and intermediate stage. Targeted therapy has been the mainstay for advanced stage and also as a bridge therapy for resectable HCC. DISCUSSION: During the COVID-19 pandemic, online medical consultation is recommended to avoid social contact. Targeted therapy as a bridge therapy is recommended for resectable HCC considering the possibility of delayed surgery.

Mitochondria-Shaping Proteins and Chemotherapy.

The emergence, in recent decades, of an entirely new area of "Mitochondrial dynamics", which consists principally of fission and fusion, reflects the recognition that mitochondria play a significant role in human tumorigenesis and response to therapeutics. Proteins that determine mitochondrial dynamics are referred to as "shaping proteins". Marked heterogeneity has been observed in the response of tumor cells to chemotherapy, which is associated with imbalances in mitochondrial dynamics and function leading to adaptive and acquired resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. Therefore, targeting mitochondria-shaping proteins may prove to be a promising approach to treat chemotherapy resistant cancers. In this review, we summarize the alterations of mitochondrial dynamics in chemotherapeutic processing and the antitumor mechanisms by which chemotherapy drugs synergize with mitochondria-shaping proteins. These might shed light on new biomarkers for better prediction of cancer chemosensitivity and contribute to the exploitation of potent therapeutic strategies for the clinical treatment of cancers.

The marriage of AIE and interface engineering: convenient synthesis and enhanced photovoltaic performance.

As a promising option out of all of the well-recognized candidates that have been developed to solve the coming energy crisis, polymer solar cells (PSCs) are a kind of competitive clean energy source. However, as a convenient and efficient method to improve the efficiency of PSCs, the inherent mechanism of the interfacial modification was still not so clear, and interfacial materials constructed with new units were limited to a large degree. Here we present a new kind of interfacial material consisting of AIE units for the first time, with an efficiency of 8.94% being achieved by inserting TPE-2 as a cathode interlayer. This is a relatively high PCE for PC71BM:PTB7-based conventional PSCs with a single-junction structure. Different measurements, including TEM, AFM, SEM, GIXRD, UPS, SKPM, and SCLC, were conducted to investigate the properties in detail. All of the obtained experimental results confirmed the advantages of the utilization of new interfacial materials with AIE characteristics in polymer solar cells, thus providing an additional choice to develop new organic cathode interfacial layers with high performances.

A 19F NMR probe for the detection of ß-galactosidase: simple structure with low molecular weight of 274.2, "turn-on" signal without the background, and good performance applicable in cancer cell line.

Based on the efficient cleavage reaction of the C-O ether bond triggered by ß-gal selectively, FB-ßGal, with good water-solubility, low toxicity, high specificity, excellent water-solubility and high biocompatibility, was prepared, which could report the presence of trace ß-gal quickly and conveniently by a significant change in the 19F NMR spectra without any background noise. The successful application of FB-ßGal for the detection of ß-gal in living Escherichia coli, HeLa cells and OVCAR-3 cells quantitatively makes it a promising candidate for practical application in related fields.

Benzene-cored AIEgens for deep-blue OLEDs: high performance without hole-transporting layers, and unexpected excellent host for orange emission as a side-effect.

Great efforts have been devoted to explore efficient fluorescent materials, especially deep-blue luminogens, for organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). In this paper, according to the design idea of creating luminogens with the characteristic of aggregation induced emission (AIE), four new benzene-cored luminogens with very simple structure have been intelligently designed, in which, without an additional hole-transporting layer (such as NPB), 3TPA-CN exhibited deep-blue emission and high performance in a simple nondoped LED device with a current efficiency (CE) of 5.21 cd A-1, external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 3.89%, and CIE coordinates of (0.15, 0.14). Excitingly, as a wonderful side-effect, 3TPA-CN can serve as an excellent host for orange emissive phosphorescent OLEDs (PhOLEDs), with a maximum current and power efficiency of 57.4 cd A-1 and 52.0 lm W-1, respectively, and a corresponding maximum EQE of 18.2%, higher than that of CBP (15.7%), one popular host for orange PhOLEDs, under the same conditions, thus broadening the utilization of AIEgens as host in PhOLEDs.