Research Progress on Chemical Constituents and Pharmacological Activities of Menispermi Rhizoma.

Menispermi Rhizoma, the rhizome of Menispermum dauricum DC., is a traditional Chinese medicine, which has the effect of clearing away heat and detoxification, dispelling wind, and relieving pain. It is often used in the treatment of sore throat, enteritis, dysentery, and rheumatism. The chemical constituents of M. Rhizoma mainly include alkaloids, phenolic acids, quinones, cardiotonic glycosides, and so on. Modern pharmacological studies have proved that M. Rhizoma has the effects of anti-tumour, anti-inflammation, anti-oxidation, bacteriostasis, cardio-cerebrovascular protection, anti-depression and anti-Alzheimer's disease. In recent years, the chemical constituents of M. Rhizoma have been found continuously, and the pharmacological studies have deepened gradually. This paper reviews the research progress on the chemical composition and pharmacological effects of M. Rhizoma, to provide a basis for further research and development of its medicinal value.

Multi-stage virtual screening of natural products against p38α mitogen-activated protein kinase: predictive modeling by machine learning, docking study and molecular dynamics simulation.

p38α is a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), and the signaling pathways involved are closely related to the inflammation, apoptosis and differentiation of cells, which also makes it an attractive target for drug discovery. With the high efficiency and low cost, virtual screening technology is becoming an indispensable part of drug development. In this study, a novel multi-stage virtual screening method based on machine learning, molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation was developed to identify p38α MAPK inhibitors from natural products in ZINC database, which improves the prediction accuracy by considering and utilizing both ligand and receptor information compared to any individual approach. Ultimately, we screened out two candidate inhibitors with acceptable ADMET properties (ZINC4260400 and ZINC8300300). Among the generated machine learning models, Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) performed better, with the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) values of 0.932 and 0.931 on the test set, as well as 0.834 and 0.850 on the external validation set. In addition, the results of molecular docking and ADMET prediction showed that two compounds with appropriate pharmacokinetic properties had binding free energies less than -8.0 kcal/mol for the target protein, and the results of molecular dynamics simulations further confirmed that they were stable during the process of inhibition.

Progress and prospects for use of cellular immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a highly malignant tumor with an increasing incidence rate in recent years. Because pancreatic cancer has an insidious onset, unknown pathophysiology, and poor prognosis, the overall survival rate of pancreatic cancer patients has not improved considerably even with extensive treatment methods such as surgery, radiation, biotherapy, and targeted therapy. Therefore, finding and developing more effective and safe treatments for pancreatic cancer is critical. Cellular immunotherapy has achieved considerable advances in the field of oncology in recent years. Technology is continuously advancing, with new breakthroughs virtually every month, and pancreatic cancer eradication is expected to improve considerably. This article examines the advance of chimeric antigen receptor NK cell immunotherapy (CAR-NK) cell immunotherapy for pancreatic cancer research, as well as research ideas for pancreatic cancer treatment.

Identification of a recombinant equine coronavirus in donkey, China.

Equine coronavirus (ECoV) was first identified in the USA and has been previously described in several countries. In order to test the presence of ECoV in China, we collected 51 small intestinal samples from donkey foals with diarrhoea from a donkey farm in Shandong Province, China between August 2020 and April 2021. Two samples tested positive for ECoV and full-length genome sequences were successfully obtained using next-generation sequencing, one of which was further confirmed by Sanger sequencing. The two strains shared 100% sequence identity at the scale of whole genome. Bioinformatics analyses further showed that the two Chinese strains represent a novel genetic variant of ECoV and shared the highest sequence identity of 97.05% with the first identified ECoV strain - NC99. In addition, it may be a recombinant, with the recombination region around the NS2 gene. To our knowledge, this is the first documented report of ECoV in China, highlighting its risk to horse/donkey breeding. In addition, its potential risk to public health also warrants further investigation.