Chinese herbal medicines for prevention and treatment of colorectal cancer: From molecular mechanisms to potential clinical applications

Worldwide, colorectal cancer(CRC) is one of the most common malignant tumors, leading to immense social and economic burdens. Currently, the main treatments for CRC include surgery, chemotherapy,radiotherapy and immunotherapy. Despite advances in the diagnosis and treatment of CRC, the prognosis for CRC patients remains poor. Furthermore, the occurrence of side effects and toxicities severely limits the clinical use of these therapies. Therefore, alternative medications with high efficacy but few side effects are needed. An increasing number of modern pharmacological studies and clinical trials have supported the effectiveness of Chinese herbal medicines(CHMs) for the prevention and treatment of CRC.CHMs may be able to effectively reduce the risk of CRC, alleviate the adverse reactions caused by chemotherapy, and prolong the survival time of patients with advanced CRC. Studies of molecular mechanisms have provided deeper insight into the roles of molecules from CHMs in treating CRC. This paper summarizes the current understanding of the use of CHMs for the prevention and treatment of CRC, the main molecular mechanisms involved in these processes, the role of CHMs in modulating chemotherapyinduced adverse reactions, and CHM's potential role in epigenetic regulation of CRC. The current study provides beneficial information on the use of CHMs for the prevention and treatment of CRC in the clinic,and suggests novel directions for new drug discovery against CRC.

Self-assembly of single metal sites embedded covalent organic frameworks into multi-dimensional nanostructures for efficient CO_(2) electroreduction

Morphology-controlled electrocatalysts with the ability of CO_(2) adsorption/activation, mass transfer, high stability and porosity are much desired in electrochemical CO_(2) reduction reaction (CO_(2)RR). Here, three kinds of multi-dimensional nanostructures (i.e., hollow sphere, nanosheets and nanofibers) have been successfully produced through the modulation of porphyrin-based covalent organic frameworks (COFs) with various modulators. The obtained nanostructures with high-stability, large surface-area, and single metal sites enable efficient CO_(2)RR into CH_(4). Notably, they all exhibit higher FE (hollow sphere, 68.2%;nanosheet, 64.2% and nanofiber, 71.0%, -0.9 V) than COF-366-Cu (43.0%, -0.9 V) after morphology control. Noteworthy, the FE of COF-366-Cu (HS) keeps higher than 52.4% over a wide potential range from -0.9 V to -1.1 V and the achieved FECH_(4) + C_(2)H_(4) (82.8%, -0.9 V) is superior to most of reported COFs and copper-based electrocatalysts. This work paves a new way in the exploration of COF-based multi-dimensional nanostructures applicable in efficient CO_(2)RR to CH_(4).