Integrin is a class of important cell surface molecules involved in cell proliferation, differentiation, adhesion and migration processes, which play an important role in a variety of pathological processes. In recent years, with the research in integrin regulation and the treatment of tumor, tissue fibrosis, and other fields, integrin has gradually become a new target in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In this article, we provide a summary on the advances of the regulation of integrin gene expression.

As a new carrier of intercellular information, the exosomes is widely regarded as a natural drug carrier for its extensive distribution, non-immunity and targeting in human body. Chinese herbal drugs act at multiple targets and through different pathways in the prevention and treatment of diseases, but the preparation is relatively simple, there is a low solubility in the effective ingredients and low bioavailability, which limit the efficacy of the medicine. Using the new drug delivery approach of the exosomes, it is better to deliver the effective components to target cells. In this review, we reviewed the biological characteristics of exosomes and its application as a carrier of Chinese herbal drugs.

This study was designed to screen the antiemetic components of Euodia rutaecarpa, and elucidate its material basis on the spectrum-effect correlation analysis. The UHPLC-Q-TOF/MS (UHPLC-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry) technology was used to obtain the fingerprint of Euodia rutaecarpa extracts. The perfusion of copper sulfate was used as a model to study the antiemetic effect by vomiting. The orthogonal partial least squares (OPLS) method was used to analyze the spectrum-effect relationship. The results indicated the following compounds were the potential antiemetic components such as rutin, limonin, narcissoside, chrysoeriol-7-O-rutinoside, hyperoside, isorhamnetin-3-O-β-D-galactoside, 1-methyl-2-undecyl-4(1H)-quinolone, 1-methyl-2-[(Z)-4-nonenyl]-4(1H)-quinolone. This study provides the experimental basis in use of Euodia rutaecarpa in the future, and provides the research methods and ideas for the similar study on the pharmacodynamic material basis of traditional Chinese medicine.

This study was designed to investigate the effect of Huangqin Tang (HQT) on gut microbiota of ulcerative colitis (UC) rats, and to explore the relationship between Huangqin Tang and ulcerative colitis and gut microbiota. Fifteen male Wistar rats were randomly divided into control group, trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS) group and TNBS + HQT group. The model of UC rats with cell immunoreactivity was made established using the compound method (TNBS and ethanol). After 10 days of administration, 15 fecal samples were collected and total DNA was extracted from the samples to get total DNA. The primers were designed on bacterial 16S rRNA V3-V4 region sequences and Illumina Miseq platform was used for high-throughput sequencing. It was found that the principal component analysis (PCA), the principal co-ordinates analysis (PCoA) and the non-metric multidimensional scale analysis (NMDS) based on the Beta diversity distance showed that there were significant differences in the composition of the gut microbiota among the three groups (P < 0.05). Compared with the control group, the Lactobacillus of the TNBS group was significantly decreased (P < 0.05), and the Lachnospiraceae, Desulfovibrio, Roseburia, Ruminococcaceae were significantly increased (P < 0.05). Compared with the TNBS group, the Lactobacillus in the TNBS + HQT group was significantly increased (P < 0.01), and the Alistipes was significantly decreased (P < 0.05). The study suggests that the Huangqin Tang plays a role in the treatment of ulcerative colitis partially through regulating the structure of the gut microbiota.

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of Danlou (correspondence between prescription and syndrome) tablet and Shengmai capsule (non-correspondence between prescription and syndrome) on mini-swine phlegm-stasis syndrome of coronary heart disease (CHD). 24 mini-swines were randomly divided into normal control group, model group, Danlou tablet group (0.24 g·kg^-1) and Shengmai capsule group (0.14 g·kg^-1). Phlegm-stasis syndrome of coronary heart disease was established by high-fat feeding and coronary intervention balloon injury. After 8 weeks of administration, blood lipid levels and blood rheology was detected. Echocardiography was used to examine the changes in heart function, and the extent of infarction was determined by nitro blue tetrazolium (NBT) staining method. The main symptoms, accompanied symptoms, tongue and pulse signs of the coronary heart disease mini-swine with phlegm-stasis syndrome were observed according to the symptom-graded scoring method. The results showed that Danlou tablet decreased serum total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01), improved the blood rheology (P < 0.01) and cardiac function, increased the left ventricular ejection fraction (EF) and fraction shortening (FS) value (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01), reduced the myocardial infarction area/ventricular area (P < 0.01), significantly lowered the scores of four diagnosis in traditional Chinese medicine (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01). Shengmai capsule improved the hemorheology indices (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01), EF and FS value (P < 0.05), reduced the tongue and pulse signs scores (P < 0.05). However, Shengmai capsule failed to show therapeutic effects on blood lipid metabolism, the myocardial infarction area and primary symptom and syndrome score. The results suggest that as a drug for the treatment of Qi and Yin deficiency syndrome of CHD, Danlou tablet has limited therapeutic effects on phlegm-stasis syndrome of CHD. Only by the prescription correspondence with syndrome, using drug for the treatment of phlegm-stasis syndrome of CHD to treat phlegm-stasis syndrome of CHD, the prescription has a comprehensive therapeutic effect.

Direct-PCR technology was using a 15 minutes heat-lysis step instead of DNA extraction to get DNA templates with small amount of plant materials followed by sensitive PCR process to amplify target genes. In order to facilitate DNA barcoding in medicinal herb identification with Direct-PCR, we collected different tissues from 80 medicinal plants as material to amplify the ITS fragments. Through optimizing the PCR reaction, ITS of 80 plant samples was all successfully amplified. PCR products were sequenced and to do Blast analysis. These results suggest that Direct-PCR would improve the efficiency of DNA barcoding in the application of medicinal herb molecular authentication.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disease of the brain. Due to the uncertain pathogenesis, prevention and treatment of AD is difficult. Clinic symptoms of AD including progressive loss of memory and spatial orientation are rooted in synaptic and neuronal loss. Unsuccessful clinical trials of several candidate drugs based on amyloid hypothesis and tau hypothesis have led to exploration of new approaches. Neuro-inflammation characterized by dysfunction in microglia is believed to be the hallmark of AD and also the initiator of downstream responses in neurodegeneration. Alleviate microglia activation and neuro-inflammation may delay AD development. In this paper, we describe the current literature on interaction between microglia and neuron, and review the progress in AD drug discovery and neuro-inflammatory inhibitors for treatment of AD.

Anthocyanins has a high health benefits and biological activity, which can make the solution easily absorbed and has a bright color, beautiful appearance in oral liquid. However, due to its particularity antioxidant activity, it is easy to be affected by the external physical and chemical factors, and then oxidation, polymerization, degradation and other unstable phenomena occurs that seriously affect the stability of products and shelf life. The traditional methods of pH regulation, deoxygenation and light avoidance could not meet the demand of stable anthocyanins. Addition of stabilizer to anthocyanins is a new effective way to improve the stability of anthocyanins. This paper is prepared to summarize systematically the principle and application methods of anthocyanins stabilizers to explore the key technology of clarification and stabilization of traditional Chinese medicine in the natural oral liquid, which may provide theoretical support and technical reference for the development and utilization of anthocyanins stabilizer.

The study is designed to evaluate the protective effect of xanthan gum (XG) injection on cartilage injury in the rabbit osteoarthritis (OA) model induced by anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT), and to explore the effect of XG on the expression of caspase-3 and Bax protein in OA cartilage. Sixty male New Zealand white rabbits were randomly divided into 6 groups (n=10) according to random number table method, and one group was selected randomly as the normal control group (control) while the other 5 groups of right knee were used to establish the OA model with ACLT, which were then divided into model group (model), XG-0.6 mg·kg^-1, XG-1.2 mg·kg^-1, XG-2.4 mg·kg^-1 treatment group and sodium hyaluronate (SH-1.2 mg·kg^-1) treatment group according to drug intervention. The knee joint temperature and knee joint width of each group were measured in the course of treatment. After treatment, the macroscopic morphology of rabbit joints in each group was observed. The pathological morphology of articular cartilage of rabbits in each group was observed using HE staining. The expression of Bax and cleaved caspase-3 in the cartilage of rabbits were detected by Western blot. The result shows that XG inhibited the increase in knee joint temperature and knee width caused by OA in a dose-dependent manner. XG improved the morphological abnormalities and tissue injuries of the femoral condyle and tibial plateau caused by OA. Western blot result shows that, compared with the control group, the levels of Bax and cleaved caspase-3 in knee cartilage cells of model group and XG-0.6 mg·kg^-1 group were significantly increased (P < 0.01). However, no significant difference was observed in the levels of Bax and cleaved caspase-3 between the model group and the XG-0.6 mg·kg^-1 group (P>0.05). These two groups are significantly higher than those of XG-1.2 mg·kg^-1 and XG-2.4 mg·kg^-1 (P < 0.01) groups. Meanwhile, no significant difference was observed in the level of cleaved caspase-3 between the knee cartilage in XG-2.4 mg·kg^-1 and XG-1.2 mg·kg^-1 group (P>0.05). The level of Bax in knee cartilage in XG-2.4 mg·kg^-1 group was lower than that of XG-1.2 mg·kg^-1 group (P < 0.05). In conclusion, XG effectively protected cartilage damage in OA, and inhibited the expression of Bax and caspase-3 protein in OA cartilage.

Due to the characteristics of propofol of high time-varying, and complex compartment model, the traditional method of nonlinear mixed effects modeling (NONMEM) has miscellaneous of variables and plenty of artificial factors in the estimation of propofol. This study was aimed to build a propofol prediction model based on the differential evolution (DE) algorithm and grey model. DE was used to optimize the pa-rameter of multi-variable grey model (MGM) and to build a model of prediction of the plasma concentration of propofol based on the grey model. It was compared with the results of NONMEM algorithm. In conclusion, the median performance error (MDPE) of DE-MGM was -4.6%, while the result of NONMEM is -12.13%. The median absolute performance error (MDAPE) of GA-BP neural network is 13.19%, while that of NONMEM is 23.12%. The experimental results suggest that the new method is suitable to determine the short half-life of anesthesia drug propofol with higher accuracy.