Latest ArticlesBoth clenbuterol (CLB) and ractopamine (RAC) are β-adrenergic agonists. After long-term excessive intake, there will be adverse reactions such as headache, chest tightness, limb numbness, and serious lifethreatening. Simultaneous detection of CLB and RAC in related samples is of great importance for human health. In this work, we outline a microfluidics-based indirect competitive immunoassay (MICI) system that can sensitively detect residual CLB and RAC in pork, swine blood and swine urine. The rapid detection of multiple samples can be achieved in one chip, which greatly improves the detection efficiency. This method has good stability and reproducibility and the microfluidic chips are easy to manufacture. The linear ranges for CLB and RAC detection by MICI are 0.1-2.5 ng/mL and 0.1-5 ng/mL, and the limits of detection (LODs) are 0.094 ng/mL and 0.091 ng/mL, respectively. This straightforward and portable immunoassay system provides a good platform for rapid detection of harmful substances in food samples.
Great success has been witnessed in last decades, some new techniques and strategies have been widely used in drug discovery. In this roadmap, several representative techniques and strategies are highlighted to show recent advances in this filed. (A) A DOX protocol has been developed for accurate protein-ligand binding structure prediction, in which first principle method was used to rank the binding poses. Validation against crystal structures have found that DOX prediction achieved an impressive success rate of 99%, indicating significant improvement over molecular docking method. (B) Virtual target profiling is a compound-centric strategy enabling a parallel implementation of interrogating compounds against various targets in a single screen, which has been used in hit/lead identification, drug repositioning, and mechanism-of-action studies. Current and emerging methods for virtual target profiling are briefly summarized herein. (C) Research on targeted autophagy to treat diseases has received encouraging progress. However, due to the complexity of autophagy and disease, experimental and in silico methods should be performed synergistically for the entire process. This part focuses on in silico methods in autophagy research to promote their use in medicinal research. (D) Histone deacetylases (HDACs) play important roles in various biological functions through the deacetylation of lysine residues. Recent studies demonstrated that HDACs, which possess low deacetylase activities, exhibited more efficient defatty-acylase activities. Here, we review the defatty-acylase activity of HDACs and describe examples for the design of isoform selective HDAC inhibitor. (E) The FDA approval of three kinase allosteric inhibitors and some others entering clinical study has spurred considerable interests in this targeted drug discovery area. (F) Recent advances are reviewed in structure-based design of novel antiviral agents to combat drug resistance. (G) Since nitric oxide (NO) exerts anticancer activity depending on its concentration, optimal levels of NO in cancer cells is desirable. In this minireview, we briefly describe recent advances in the research of NO-based anticancer agents by our group and present some opinions on the future development of these agents. (H) The field of photoactivation strategies have been extensively developed for controlling chemical and biological processes with light. This review will summarize and provide insight into recent research advances in the understanding of photoactivatable molecules including photoactivatable caged prodrugs and photoswitchable molecules.
Zeolites have been widely applied in many chemical processes owing to their featured microporous framework structures. Organic structure-directing agents (OSDAs) play an important role during of the formation of zeolite frameworks via non-bonding host-guest interactions. Understanding these interactions is crucial to the design of OSDAs and the synthesis of target zeolites. Here, we report a molecular simulation study in the host-guest interactions between zeolite framework STW and 21 alkylated imidazolium and pyrazolium cations that have been used as the OSDAs for the synthesis of STW-type zeolites. We find that OSDAs that have successfully directed the formation of STW exhibit stronger host-guest interactions than unsuccessful ones. Furthermore, we find all successful OSDAs possess relatively more negative atomic charges on nitrogen atoms and smaller dipole moments. According to this finding, we have designed seven new alkylated imidazolium and pyrazolium cations that may be suitable for zeolite STW, and verified their structure-directing capability by molecular simulation calculations.
Tumor cell resistance is one of the big hurdles limiting the therapeutic efficacy of tumor necrosis factorrelated apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL)-based cancer treatment. Therefore, the development of a safe and effective sensitizer agent is greatly desired for optimizing TRAIL therapy. Herein, we successfully developed a Se/Fe complex with low toxicity to highly effectively inhibit tumor cells proliferation and migration capabilities through down-regulating ER stress related selenoproteins. Furthermore, it could more efficiently damage tumor spheroids with good penetration capability. More importantly, it could synergize with TRAIL treatment to induce the robust generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), downregulating ER stress related selenoproteins for triggering tumor cells apoptosis in extrinsic and intrinsic signaling pathways. Taken together, this study provides a potential chemo-drug and sensitizer agent to improve the therapeutic efficacy of TRAIL-based cancer treatment.
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) derived from cancer cells are considered as ideal biomarker for liquid biopsy in cancer diagnosis, and are stable and abundant. Electrochemical methods for the detection of EVs are preferred over conventional methods such as Western blotting and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for their high sensitivity and real-time detection. This article summaries studies proposing the electrochemical methods utilizing immunological and molecular methodologies for detecting EVs derived biomacromolecules such as miRNAs and transmembrane protein for cancer diagnosis. Moreover, the electrochemical detection methods are compared and future prospects for the development of electrochemical methods for EVs detection are concluded.
The effective extracting Cr(VI) from chromite ore processing residue (COPR) is the key to achieve COPR detoxification and recovery. We developed an effective method to extract Cr(VI) from COPR via controlling the phase transformation of Cr(VI)-containing minerals. Characteristic analysis showed that Cr(VI) was mainly incorporated in the hydrocalumite (NaCa4Al2O6(SO4/CrO4)1.5·15H2O) in COPR, which was a layered-double hydroxide (LDH) with multilayer structure. In the hydrothermal treatment experiments, the Na2CO3 solution showed significant extraction effect of Cr(VI) and detoxification effect of COPR. After treatment, 95% of Cr(VI) was removed and the Cr(VI) concentration in the leachate was decreased to 1.6 mg/L by the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP), within the regulatory limit disposal standard (HJ/T 301-2007, 3 mg/L). Further study revealed that, during the treatment, hydrocalumite transformed into calcite (CaCO3) under the effect of mineralizer, therefore, the layered structure collapsed and the incorporated Cr(VI) was released to the supernatant. Meanwhile, the Cr(VI) desorbed from calcite with the calcite particles grew into large size with smooth surface. Stir-flow experiment revealed that the amount of chromium released from CORP to the environment was significantly reduced after treatment, and it is safer for landfill disposal. This work will provide an instructive guidance for the detoxification and recovery of COPR.
About 90% cancer-related mortality results from the cancer metastasis, which generally undergoes after epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) process. N-Cadherin, overexpressed on cancer cell surface during EMT, can enhance the migration of cancer cells. Herein, we design and synthesize a transformable peptide BP-KLVFF-SWTLYTPSGQSK (BFS) that can block N-cadherin for inhibiting cancer migration and metastasis. The peptide BFS consists of three modules including (1) the hydrophobic bis-pyrene (BP) unit for forming and locating nanoparticles, (2) the KLVFF peptide sequence for forming and stabilizing fibrous structures and (3) the targeting peptide sequence SWTLYTPSGQSK that can specifically bind to Ncadherin. The peptide BFS can form nanoparticles in PBS, which can transform to nanofibers when targeting and binding to N-cadherin. The nanofibers inhibit the migration of N-cadherin overexpressed MDA-MB-436 cancer cells. The peptide BFS shows 83.6% inhibiting rate in cells wound healing assay. In addition, the inhibition rate is 67.9% when the BFS applied in transwell migration assay. These results indicate that the BFS has excellent ability to inhibit migration of cancer cells. This self-assembly strategy could be potentially utilized to regulate the key protein during EMT for inhibiting the tumor metastasis.
A new paradigm to remove toxic chromate anions from aqueous solution by crystallization of chromatewater clusters with imine-linked guanidinium cationic ligands is introduced. The guanidium-based cationic ligand was easily prepared through the imine condensation of an aldehyde and aminoguanidine hydrochloride. The cationic imine-linked guanidinium ligand (BBIG-Cl) showed a high removal capacity (292.5 mg/g) in the solutions. Rapid decontamination of chromate anions from the wastewater by this cationic ligand was resulted from an instantaneous crystallization. The produced guanidium chromate salts have an extremely low solubility (Ksp, BBIG = 8.19×10-9). Such superior removal performance of these materials was attributed to the charge-assisted hydrogen bonding between the cationic ligand and chromate-water hydrate anions, which was revealed by the single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. In addition, the successful recovery of the guanidium-based ligand makes it more attractive for real-world applications.
Last two decades, with the rapid changes and development of nanotechnology and biological materials, diverse multi-functional nanomaterials emerging, which offers a novel way to treat and diagnose diseases, and therefore spawned the new biomedical technology of theranostics, which integrates the treatment and diagnosis or monitoring of diseases into one. Ag2S as a bio-nanomaterial with low biotoxicity has attracted more and more attention due to its good photoluminescence properties and fluorescence imaging of small animals in the second near-infrared region (NIR-II). Meanwhile, Ag2S has the ability to absorb near-infrared light strongly because of its local surface plasma resonance (LSPR) effect and had become a kind of photothermal converters with good photothermal conversion efficiency. More interestingly, both photothermal effect and fluorescence characteristics of Ag2S nanoparticles (NPs) are closely related to their particle sizes. However, the relationship between photothermal effect and fluorescence characteristics of Ag2S NPs and their sizes has not been reviewed so far. Herein, the synthesis methods and influencing factors of synthesize Ag2S NPs with different sizes were compared firstly, and then the photothermal effect and fluorescence characteristics of Ag2S NPs with different sizes were summarized. Finally, the possibilities and challenges of using Ag2S NPs to construct theranostic agent were discussed in the end.
The chemical composition obviously affects the surface wettability of a three-dimensional (3D) graphene material apart from its surface energy and microstructure. In the hydrothermal preparation, the heteroatom doping changes the chemical composition and wettability of the 3D graphene material. To realize the controllable surface wettability of graphene materials, aminobenzene sulfonic acid (ABSA) was selected as a typical doping agent for the preparation of nitrogen and sulfur co-doped 3D graphene foam (SNGF) using a hydrothermal method. Different from using o-ABSA or p-ABSA as the dopant, SNGF with tunable surface wettability is obtained only when m-ABSA is used. This result indicates that the substituent position of -SO3H group in the benzene ring of ABSA is rather important for the tunable wettability. This work provides some theoretical foundations for dopant selection and some new insights in manipulating the properties of 3D graphene foams by adjusting the configuration of dopants.
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