Discussion on application of food-medicine homologous traditional Chinese medicine in prevention prescriptions for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

From sorting out and statistical analysis of 172 prevention prescriptions for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) put forward by government departments, medical institutions and TCM clinical experts in various provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, the results showed that food-medicine homologous traditional Chinese medicine (abbreviated as"food-medicine materials") such as honeysuckle, licorice, agastache, tangerine peel, fresh reed rhizome, perilla and platycodon are used most frequently. Combined with TCM theory and modern pharmacology analysis, not only deeper understandin/g of the application value of food-medicine materials, but also reference value of their daily use and development of related products reference in the future is expected to be acquired.

High-temperature polymer-based nanocomposites for high energy storage performance with robust cycling stability

High-power capacitors are highly demanded in advanced electronics and power systems,where rising concerns on the operating temperatures have evoked the attention on developing highly reliable high-temperature dielectric polymers.Herein,polyetherimide(PEI)filled with highly insulating Al_(2)O_(3)(AO)nanoparticles dielectric composite films have been fabricated aiming for high thermal stability and reliability operated under high cycling electric field and elevated temperature.At room temperature,incorporating a small fraction of 0.5 vol%AO nanoparticles gives rise to a highest discharged energy density(U_(e))of 5.57 J·cm^(-3)and efficiency(η)of 90.9%at650 MV·m^(-1),and a robust cycling stability up to 10^(7) cycles at 400 MV·m^(-1).Due to the substantially reduced dielectric loss,2.0 vol%AO/PEI nanocomposite film exhibits excellent high-temperature capacitive performances,delivering U_(e)~7.33 J·cm^(-3)withη~88.8%under 700 MV·m^(-1),and cycling stability up to 10^(6) cycles under 400 MV·m^(-1)at 100℃,and U_(e)~5.57 J·cm^(-3)withη~84.7%under 620 MV·m^(-1)at 150℃.Molecular dynamic simulations are performed to understand the microscopic mechanism via revealing the polymer relaxation process in the AO/PEI composite at elevated temperatures.Our results are therefore very encouraging for high-temperature high-power capacitor application.

Microencapsulation of immunoglobulin Y: optimization with response surface morphology and controlled release during simulated gastrointestinal digestion

Immunoglobulin Y(Ig Y)is an effective orally administered antibody used to protect against various intestinal pathogens,but which cannot tolerate the acidic gastric environment.In this study,Ig Y was microencapsulated by alginate(ALG)and coated with chitooligosaccharide(COS).A response surface methodology was used to optimize the formulation,and a simulated gastrointestinal(GI)digestion(SGID)system to evaluate the controlled release of microencapsulated Ig Y.The microcapsule formulation was optimized as an ALG concentration of 1.56%(15.6 g/L),COS level of 0.61%(6.1 g/L),and Ig Y/ALG ratio of 62.44%(mass ratio).The microcapsules prepared following this formulation had an encapsulation efficiency of 65.19%,a loading capacity of 33.75%,and an average particle size of 588.75μm.Under this optimum formulation,the coating of COS provided a less porous and more continuous microstructure by filling the cracks on the surface,and thus the GI release rate of encapsulated Ig Y was significantly reduced.The release of encapsulated Ig Y during simulated gastric and intestinal digestion well fitted the zero-order and first-order kinetics functions,respectively.The microcapsule also allowed the Ig Y to retain 84.37%immune-activity after 4 h simulated GI digestion,significantly higher than that for unprotected Ig Y(5.33%).This approach could provide an efficient way to preserve Ig Y and improve its performance in the GI tract.

Mechanisms of acquired resistance to tyrosine kinase inhibitors

In recent years,structural and functional studies reveal that tyrosine kinases(TKs)act as the essential components of signal transduction pathways that regulate cancer cell proliferation,apoptosis and angiogenesis,and therefore become potential targets for anticancer therapy.Most of TK inhibitors(TKIs)are small molecular and hydrophobic compounds,thus they can rapidly reach their specific intracellular targets and inhibit the activation of the related TKs.Unfortunately,accompanied with patients who gain great benefit of TKIs therapy,increasing evidences of acquired resistance to these agents have been documented.The unveiling point mutations within the kinase domain,gene amplification or overexpression,or modification of signaling pathway have been implicated in drug resistance.Additionally,overexpression of ABC transporters is likely to set stage for resistant development.In this review,we focus on the discussion of the molecular mechanisms of acquired resistance to TKIs therapy.The mechanistic understanding may help to put forward new hypotheses on drug development and design better therapies to overcome TKIs resistance.

AtPQT11,a P450 enzyme,detoxifies paraquat via N-demethylation

Paraquat(1,1’-dimethyl-4,4’-bipyridinium dichloride,PQ)has been widely used as a broad spectrum nonselective herbicide in agriculture for decades(Baldwin et al.,1968).Plants absorb PQ from their environment and transport to the chloroplasts,the site of its action where it competes for electrons from photosystem I(PSI)and cyclically generates superoxide that is converted to H2O2by superoxide dismutases(SODs),resultantly accumulating a large amount of reactive oxygen species(ROS)and thereby killing plants(Farrington et al.,1973).

Enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production under visible light of an organic-inorganic hybrid material based on enzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene polymer and TiO_(2)

Titanium dioxide(TiO_(2))has been limited in photocatalysis due to its wide band gap(3.2 eV)and limited absorption in the ultraviolet range.Therefore,organic components have been introduced to hybrid with TiO_(2) for enhanced photocatalytic efficiency under visible light.Here,we report that benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene polymer was an ideal organic material for the preparation of a hybrid material with TiO_(2).The energy band gap of the resulting hybrid material decreased to 2.9 eV and the photocatalytic hydrogen production performance reached 745.0μmol g^(-1) h^(-1) under visible light irradiation.Meanwhile,the material still maintained the stability of hydrogen production performance after 40 h of photocatalytic cycles.The analysis of the transient current response and electrochemical impedance revealed that the main reasons for the enhanced water splitting of the hybrid materials were the faster separation of electron hole pairs and the lower recombination of photocarrier ions.Our findings suggest that polythiophene is a promising organic material for exploring hybrid materials with enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production.

Novel thioredoxin reductase inhibitor butaselen inhibits tumorigenesis by down-regulating programmed death-ligand 1 expression

The thioredoxin system plays a role in a variety of physiological functions, including cell growth, differenti- ation, apoptosis, tumorigenesis, and immunity. We previously confirmed that butaselen （BS）, a novel thioredoxin reductase inhibitor, can inhibit the growth of various human cancer cell lines, yet the underlying mechanism remains elusive. In this study, we investigated the anti-tumor effect of BS in vivo through regulating the immune system of KM mice. We found that BS inhibits tumor proliferation by promoting the activation of splenic lymphocytes in mice. BS can elevate the percentage of CD^4-CD8^＋ T lymphocytes and the secretion of downstream cytokines in mice via downregulating the expression of programmed death-ligand 1 （PD-L1） on the tumor cells＇ surface in vivo. Further study in HepG2 and BEL-7402 cells showed that decrease of PD-L1 level after BS treatment was achieved by inhibiting signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 （STAT3） phosphorylation. Taken together, our results suggest that BS has a role in promoting the immune response by reducing PD-L1 expression via the STAT3 pathway, and subsequently suppresses tumorigenesis.

Item Cold-Start Recommendation with Personalized Feature Selection

The problem of recommending new items to users(often referred to as item cold-start recommendation)remains a challenge due to the absence of users’past preferences for these items.Item features from side information are typically leveraged to tackle the problem.Existing methods formulate regression methods,taking item features as input and user ratings as output.These methods are confronted with the issue of overfitting when item features are high-dimensional,which greatly impedes the recommendation experience.Availing of high-dimensional item features,in this work,we opt for feature selection to solve the problem of recommending top-N new items.Existing feature selection methods find a common set of features for all users,which fails to differentiate users1 preferences over item features.To personalize feature selection,we propose to select item features discriminately for different users.We study the personalization of feature selection at the level of the user or user group.We fulfill the task by proposing two embedded feature selection models.The process of personalized feature selection filters out the dimensions that are irrelevant to recommendations or unappealing to users.Experimental results on real-life datasets with high-dimensional side information reveal that the proposed method is effective in singling out features that are crucial to top-N recommendation and hence improving performance.