Research progress of Traditional Chinese Medicine for the treatment of rhythm disorder of blood pressure / 国际中医中药杂志

Normal human blood pressure has a unique "dipper type" rhythm, but various pathological factors will lead to abnormal nighttime blood pressure decline, seriously damage the target organs such as the heart, brain and kidneys, and significantly increase the incidence of cardiovascular events. Therefore, it is necessary to pay sufficient attention to rhythm disorder of blood pressure and intervene early. Modern Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) mostly understands the changes of rhythm of blood pressure from the view of the unity of nature and man, yin-yang theory and the theory of meridian flow, and study the syndrome distribution and TCM constitution law of rhythm disorder of blood pressure by combining TCM syndrome differentiation method and TCM constitution theory. TCM treatment can restore blood pressure rhythm and improve clinical symptoms and sleep quality of patients.

Natural exosome-like nanovesicles from edible tea flowers suppress metastatic breast cancer via ROS generation and microbiota modulation

Although several artificial nanotherapeutics have been approved for practical treatment of metastatic breast cancer, their inefficient therapeutic outcomes, serious adverse effects, and high cost of mass production remain crucial challenges. Herein, we developed an alternative strategy to specifically trigger apoptosis of breast tumors and inhibit their lung metastasis by using natural nanovehicles from tea flowers (TFENs). These nanovehicles had desirable particle sizes (131 nm), exosome-like morphology, and negative zeta potentials. Furthermore, TFENs were found to contain large amounts of polyphenols, flavonoids, functional proteins, and lipids. Cell experiments revealed that TFENs showed strong cytotoxicities against cancer cells due to the stimulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) amplification. The increased intracellular ROS amounts could not only trigger mitochondrial damage, but also arrest cell cycle, resulting in the in vitro anti-proliferation, anti-migration, and anti-invasion activities against breast cancer cells. Further mice investigations demonstrated that TFENs after intravenous (i.v.) injection or oral administration could accumulate in breast tumors and lung metastatic sites, inhibit the growth and metastasis of breast cancer, and modulate gut microbiota. This study brings new insights to the green production of natural exosome-like nanoplatform for the inhibition of breast cancer and its lung metastasis via i.v. and oral routes.