Kinetically and thermodynamically controlled one-pot growth of gold nanoshells with NIR-II absorption for multimodal imaging-guided photothermal therapy.

Since the successful clinical trial of AuroShell for photothermal therapy, there is currently intense interest in developing gold-based core-shell structures with near-infrared (NIR) absorption ranging from NIR-I (650-900 nm) to NIR-II (900-1700 nm). Here, we propose a seed-mediated successive growth approach to produce gold nanoshells on the surface of the nanoscale metal-organic framework (NMOF) of UiO-66-NH2 (UiO = the University of Oslo) in one pot. The key to this strategy is to modulate the proportion of the formaldehyde (reductant) and its regulator / oxidative product of formic acid to harness the particle nucleation and growth rate within the same system. The gold nanoshells propagate through a well-oriented and controllable diffusion growth pattern (points → facets → octahedron), which has not been identified. Most strikingly, the gold nanoshells prepared hereby exhibit an exceedingly broad and strong absorption in NIR-II with a peak beyond 1300 nm and outstanding photothermal conversion efficiency of 74.0%. Owing to such superior performance, these gold nanoshells show promising outcomes in photoacoustic (PA), computed tomography (CT), and photothermal imaging-guided photothermal therapy (PTT) for breast cancer, as demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo.

Phenotypic analysis of Phytophthora parasitica by using high throughput phenotypic microarray.

OBJECTIVE: We studied the phenotypic characterization of Phytophthora parasitica Dastur var. nicotianae. METHODS: Phenotypic characterization of the pathogen was studied to provide information for disease management program by using BIOLOG phenotype MicroArray (PM ). Using PM plates 1 to 10, 950 different phenotypic characterizations were tested. RESULTS: P. parasitica was able to metabolize 74% of tested carbon sources, 96% of nitrogen sources, 100% of sulfur sources, and 98% of phosphorus sources. Most informative utilization patterns for carbon sources of P. parasitica were organic acids and carbohydrates, and for nitrogen were various amino acids. The pathogen presented 285 different nitrogen pathways. It had wide range adaptabilities in osmolytes with up to 1% sodium chloride, up to 3% potassium chloride, up to 5% sodium sulfate, up to 20% ethylene glycol, up to 2% sodium formate, up to 5% urea, and up to 2% sodium lactate. It also exhibited active metabolism under pH values between 3.5 and 10, with optimal pH of around 7.0. The pathogen showed both decarboxylase and deaminase activities in the presence of various amino acids. CONCLUSION: These phenotypic characterizations of P. parasitica provided the theoretical basis for the next study of the pathogen in physiology and metabolism, and provided potential new way for tobacco black shank management.

[Progress on application of traditional Chinese medicine in hemopoietic stem cell transplantation].

The pertinent literature on application of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in hemopoietic stem cell transplantation was summarized, it indicated that the intervention of TCM could raise the mobilization effect, speed up the hemopoiesis and immunologic reconstruction after transplantation, decrease the incidence of complications, and prolong the life span of patients, showing a preliminary achievement.

Clinical study on effect of Astragalus Injection and its immuno-regulation action in treating chronic aplastic anemia.

OBJECTIVE: To observe the clinical effect of Astragalus Injection (, AI) and its immuno-regulatory action in treating chronic aplastic anemia (CAA). METHODS: Sixty patients with CAA were randomly assigned to two groups equally, both were treated with Stanozolol three times a day, 2 mg each time through oral intake, but AI was given additionally to the patients in the treated group once a day via intravenous dripping. All were treated for 15 days as one therapeutic course and the whole medication lasted for more than 4 months totally, with follow-up adopted. The clinical efficacy was estimated and the changes of T-lymphocyte subsets in peripheral blood as well as the serum levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) and interleukin-2 (IL-2) were observed. RESULTS: The total effective rate in the treated group was 83.3% (25/30), which was higher than that in the control group 66.7% (20/30), showing significant difference between them (P<0.05). Levels of hemoglobin, WBC, reticular cell and platelet were elevated in both groups after treatment, but the improvement was significantly better in the treated group than that in the control group with respect to the former three indexes (P<0.05). The level of CD4(+) increased and that of CD8(+) decreased significantly after treatment in the treated group (P<0.05), which showed significant difference as compared with those in the control group (P<0.05). Levels of serum TNF-alpha and IL-2 lowered after treatment in both groups, but significance only showed in the treated group (P<0.05). The degree of proliferation in bone marrow got raised significantly and the percentage of non-hemopoietic cells reduced significantly in the treated group after treatment, also showing significant difference to those in the control group (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: AI could promote the recovery of hemopoietic function, which might be through improving T-lymphocyte subsets and reducing the release of negative regulatory factors such as TNF-alpha and IL-2 to alleviate the inhibition on hemopoietic function.