Hyaluronic Acid-modified Liposomes for Ursolic Acid-targeted Delivery Treat Lung Cancer Based on p53/ARTS-mediated Mitochondrial Apoptosis.

Background: Chemotherapy drugs can cause drug resistance and other problems when treating lung cancer, which leads to treatment failure. Ursolic acid (UA) is used in formulations based on traditional Chinese medicine. UA has excellent anti-tumor effects, but they are limited by solubility and non-specificity to tumor cells. Objectives: To overcome these issues, we created a novel hyaluronic acid (HA)-targeted liposome system for delivering UA (HA-Lipo/UA) to explore the targeting and anti-tumor effects of UA. Methods: We constructed the HA-Lipo/UA delivery system by the thin film hydration method. The uptake and localization of UA were detected by flow cytometry and microscope. Cell proliferation of A549 cells was detected by MTT assays. Apoptosis and reactive oxygen species (ROS) expression of A549 cells were also evaluated after being treated with HA-Lipo/UA. Western blot analysis evaluated the anti-tumor mechanism of HA-Lipo/UA. Results: HA-Lipo/UA exhibited favorable targeting of the cluster of differentiation (CD)44-overexpressing A549 cells. HA-Lipo/UA exhibited significant inhibition of the proliferation of A549 cells and induced their apoptosis compared with the corresponding monotherapies. HA-Lipo/UA induced overexpression of reactive oxygen species and upregulated expression of p53 and apoptosis-related protein in the transforming growth factor-ß signaling (ARTS) pathway, which induced cytochrome-c release, activation of caspase-3, and promoted mitochondrial apoptosis in A549 cells. Conclusions: Taken together, these data suggested that HA-Lipo/UA could be used to target tumor cells.

Chemical Composition of Litsea pungens Essential Oil and Its Potential Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Activities.

Litsea pungens is a plant with medicinal and edible properties, where the fruits are edible and the leaves have medicinal properties. However, there is limited research on the chemical and pharmacological activities of the plant. In this study, essential oils were extracted by steam distillation and their antioxidant and antibacterial activities were further evaluated. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used to identify the chemical components of L. pungens fresh fruit essential oil (FREO) and L. pungens fresh flower essential oil (FLEO), rapeseed oil (RO) and commercial Litsea oil (CEO). The results showed that 12 chemical components were identified in FREO. Twelve chemical components were identified from FLEO, four chemical components were identified from CEO, and thirteen chemical components were identified from RO. Except for RO, the other three oils were mainly composed of terpenes, among which limonene is the main chemical component. In terms of antioxidant activity, FREO, FLEO, CEO and RO have antioxidant capacity, mainly reflected in the scavenging DPPH free radicals and the iron ion chelating ability, and the antioxidant activity shows a certain dose effect, but the antioxidant activity of FLEO is the weakest among the four oils. Meanwhile, under the stress of hydrogen peroxide, CEO demonstrated a significant antioxidant protective effect on cells. It is worth mentioning that compared with the positive control, the FREO exhibited a better antibacterial rate. When the concentration of essential oil is 20 mg/mL, the bacteriostatic rate can reach 100%. Therefore, it could be a promising candidate among medicinal and edible plants.

Expression and clinical significance of phospholipase D1 in de novo acute myeloid leukemia.

Objective: Phospholipase D (PLD) is known to participate in several aspects of cellular processes including cell mitosis, migration, phagocytosis, and membrane vesicle trafficking. The role of PLD has been investigated in multiple cancers except hematologic malignances. Methods: We enrolled 291 patients with de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and detected PLD1 mRNA expression levels of their bone marrow samples by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Clinical relevance of PLD1 was assessed using Kaplan-Meier analysis, univariate analysis, and multivariate analysis. Results: Compared to healthy donors, AML patients had higher mRNA levels of PLD1, which was significantly associated with FAB classification. Importantly, patients with low levels of PLD1 had impaired overall survival and event-free survival. Moreover, univariate and multivariate analyses confirmed that PLD1 expression was an independent prognostic factor for AML. Conclusion: PLD1 represented a useful diagnostic marker and prognostic factor for AML.

Interference-Aware Subcarrier Allocation for Massive Machine-Type Communication in 5G-Enabled Internet of Things.

Massive machine-type communication (mMTC) is investigated as one of three typical scenes of the 5th-generation (5G) network. In this paper, we propose a 5G-enabled internet of things (IoT) in which some enhanced mobile broadband devices transmit video stream to a centralized controller and some mMTC devices exchange short packet data with adjacent devices via D2D communication to promote inter-device cooperation. Since massive MTC devices have data transmission requirements in 5G-enabled IoT with limited spectrum resources, the subcarrier allocation problem is investigated to maximize the connectivity of mMTC devices subject to the quality of service (QoS) requirement of enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) devices and mMTC devices. To solve the formulated mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem, which is NP-hard, an interference-aware subcarrier allocation algorithm for mMTC communication (IASA) is developed to maximize the number of active mMTC devices. Finally, the performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by simulation. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the three traditional benchmark methods, which significantly improves the utilization of the uplink spectrum. This indicates that the proposed IASA algorithm provides a better solution for IoT application.