Multiple roles of ferric chloride in preparing efficient magnetic hydrochar for sorption of methylene blue from water solutions.

Highly efficient and cheap magnetic materials have application prospects in wastewater treatment. Herein, Fe3O4-loaded hydrochar (HC-Fe3O4) was obtained from hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of bamboo with FeCl3 and then added with FeCl3 to form a magnetic sorbent via simple precipitation. The HC-Fe3O4 was characterized with various instruments. The characterizations show FeCl3 plays at least two roles as a catalyst and an oxidant in HTC. The specific surface area of hydrochar enlarged from 39.9731 to 60.9887 m2·g-1 after the addition of FeCl3 during HTC, which showed FeCl3 acted as a catalyst in HTC. XRD indicated Fe3O4 was formed by the structure of HC-Fe3O4, which indicated Fe(III) was reduced to Fe(II) during HTC. Sorption of methylene blue (MB) onto HC-Fe3O4 was better fitted by the Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetic models. Sorption is a spontaneous thermodynamic endothermic process and HC-Fe3O4 is easily separated by an applied magnetic field and reused.

Design and Synthesis of Novel Celastrol Derivatives as Potential Anticancer Agents against Gastric Cancer Cells.

Gastric cancer (GC) is a common malignant disease worldwide, and finding novel agents and strategies for the treatment of GC are of urgent need. Celastrol (CEL) is a well-known natural product with antineoplastic activity. In this study, pyrazole analogues were introduced at the C-29 position of CEL. A total of 24 new derivatives were designed, synthesized, and evaluated for their mechanism and antitumor activity in vitro and in vivo. Among them, compound 21 exhibited the best activity against BGC-823 cells (IC50 = 0.21 ± 0.01 µM). Further biological studies showed that 21 significantly raised the reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels to activate the apoptotic pathway, causing mitochondrial dysfunction in BGC-823 cells. In addition, 21 also arrested cells in the G2/M phase to induce tumor cell apoptosis. In a nude mouse tumor xenograft model, 21 exhibited a better tumor inhibition rate (89.85%) than CEL (inhibition rate 76.52%). Taken together, the present study has provided an anticancer lead compound candidate, 21, and has revealed that increased ROS generation may be an effective strategy in the treatment of GC.

[Short-term effect of ibuprofen on clinical indexes and cytokines in the gingival crevicular fluid of patients with severe chronic periodontitis].

PURPOSE: To explore the short-term effects of ibuprofen on clinical indexes and cytokines in the gingival crevicular fluid of patients with severe chronic periodontitis. METHODS: Twenty subjects with severe chronic periodontitis but otherwise healthy participated in the study and they were divided into two groups randomly. The patients in the experimental group took ibuprofen 300mg, bid for 5 days after scaling and root planing (SRP), while patients in the control group only underwent SRP. Clinical indexes were recorded at baseline, 1 w, 2 w, 4 w, respectively. Meanwhile, the levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), osteoprotegerin (OPG) and receptor activator of NF-κB ligand (RANKL) in the gingival crevicular fluid were detected. SPSS 17.0 software package was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: At each time point, both the clinical data and the levels of TNF-α, RANKL, OPG and RANKL/OPG between the experimental group and the control group were not statistically significant (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: We can't disclose the positive effect of ibuprofen's short-term oral administration on the treatment of severe chronic periodontitis.

[Inhibition of HIV-1 in vitro by combination of vpr and tat specific short hairpin RNA via lentiviral vectors].

Gene therapy offers the promise of curing the HIV-infected patients. Specific, potent, and sustained short hairpin RNA (shRNA)-mediated gene silencing is crucial for the successful application of RNA interference technology to therapeutic interventions. To reduce the probability of viral escape mutants, in this study, we constructed lentiviral vector containing vpr and tat shRNA, respectively, furthermore the bispecific lentiviral vector harboring vpr and tat shRNA expression cassettes from U6 promotor and H1 promotor was cotransfected with recombinant plasmid expressing the vpr and tat gene. The result showed that the bispecific lentiviral vector plvx-vpr-tatshRNA could inhibit the vpr and tat effectively,with ratios of 89.20% and 62.00% respectively. When cotransfected with pNL4-3 in 293T cell, plvx-vpr-tatshRNA showed higher efficacy in down regulating the HIV NL4-3 packaging production than the plvx-vprshRNA or plvx-tatshRNA individually. MT4 cell clones transduced with recombinant lentiviral vectors were screened and challenged with HIV NL4-3. P24 ELISA test showed that MT4 transduced with the combinational lentiviral vector could inhibit virus replication efficiently.