Publications by authors named "ChengChao Xu"

Polyphyllins are the active ingredients of the medicinal plant Paris polyphylla. The biosynthesis of different types of polyphyllins all require the catalysis of glycosyltransferases. Even though significant efforts have been made to identify PpUGTs capable of catalyzing the initial glycosylation reaction, the specific glycosyltransferases responsible for the synthesis of trillin have not been reported in P.

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N-glycosylation is a highly heterogeneous post-translational modification that modulates protein function. Defects in N-glycosylation are directly linked to various human diseases. Despite the importance of quantifying N-glycans with high precision, existing glycoinformatics tools are limited.

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Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease that affects multiple organs and systems in the human body, often leading to disability. Its pathogenesis is complex, and the long-term use of traditional anti-rheumatic drugs frequently results in severe toxic side effects. Therefore, the search for a safer and more effective antirheumatic drug is extremely important for the treatment of RA.

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Background: Chimeric antigen receptor natural killer (CAR-NK) therapy holds great promise for treating hematologic tumors, but its efficacy in solid tumors is limited owing to the lack of suitable targets and poor infiltration of engineered NK cells. Here, we explore whether immunogenic cell death (ICD) marker ERp57 translocated from endoplasmic reticulum to cell surface after drug treatment could be used as a target for CAR-NK therapy.

Methods: To target ERp57, a VHH phage display library was used for screening ERp57-targeted nanobodies (Nbs).

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Cancer is one of the most challenging diseases in the world. Recently, iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) are emerging materials with rapid development and high application value, and have shown great potential on tumor therapy due to their unique magnetic and biocompatible properties. However, some data hint us that IONPs were toxic to normal cells and vital organs.

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Malaria continues to pose a serious global health threat, and artemisinin remains the core drug for global malaria control. However, the situation of malaria resistance has become increasingly severe due to the emergence and spread of artemisinin resistance. In recent years, significant progress has been made in understanding the mechanism of action (MoA) of artemisinin.

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  • Nanomaterial-based nanomedicine is primarily focused on traditional apoptosis for cancer treatment, but there is a growing need to incorporate alternative cell death methods like ferroptosis and immunogenic cell death to boost the immune response against tumors.
  • A new multifunctional nanocomposite called HFT NPs was developed, combining HMME, Fe, and Tannic acid to induce various cell death pathways and improve the tumor microenvironment, using ultrasound for enhanced efficacy.
  • The study found that HFT NPs, when paired with ultrasound, can produce reactive oxygen species and reshape the tumor microenvironment to increase T cell infiltration, showing promise for more effective cancer treatments, especially in tumors with low immunogenicity.
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Identifying the cellular targets of bioactive small molecules within tissues has been a major concern in drug discovery and chemical biology research. Compared to cell line models, tissues consist of multiple cell types and complicated microenvironments. Therefore, elucidating the distribution and heterogeneity of targets across various cells in tissues would enhance the mechanistic understanding of drug or toxin action in real-life scenarios.

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The emerging Omicron subvariants have a remarkable ability to spread and escape nearly all current monoclonal antibody (mAb) treatments. Although the virulence of SARS-CoV-2 has now diminished, it remains a significant threat to public health due to its high transmissibility and susceptibility to mutation. Therefore, it is urgent to develop broad-acting and potent therapeutics targeting current and emerging Omicron variants.

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Objectives: To observe the effects of the local stimulation with 3 acupuncture techniques, i.e. (needle insertion method like dark tortoise detecting point) technique, electroacupuncture (EA) and warm needling (WN) with filiform needles on shoulder pain, shoulder joint function, quality of life, inflammatory indicators and recurrence rate in the patients with chronic scapulohumeral periarthritis (CSP), so as to explore the optimal needling method of acupuncture for the predominant symptoms of CSP during the attack stage in the patients.

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Understanding the thermal stability of the plant proteome in the context of the native cellular environment would aid the design of crops with high thermal tolerance, but only limited such data are available. Here, we applied quantitative mass spectrometry to profile the thermal stability of the Arabidopsis proteome and identify thermo-sensitive and thermo-resilient protein networks in Arabidopsis, providing a basis for understanding heat-induced damage. We also show that the similarities of the protein-melting curves can be used as a proxy to evaluate system-wide protein-protein interactions in non-engineered plants and enable the identification of transient interactions exhibited by metabolons in the context of the cellular environment.

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  • * High cholesterol levels result in a protein corona that is enriched with apolipoproteins and has fewer complement proteins, leading to stronger inflammatory responses in macrophages and increased uptake in liver cells.
  • * The study's in vivo results show that NPs are more effectively targeted to organs like the liver and brain in mice with hypercholesterolemia, highlighting how the metabolome can influence the efficacy and safety of nanomedicines and suggesting a potential for personalized treatment approaches.
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Targeted protein degradation (TPD) is an emerging therapeutic strategy with the potential to modulate disease-associated proteins that have previously been considered undruggable, by employing the host destruction machinery. The exploration and discovery of cellular degradation pathways, including but not limited to proteasomes and lysosome pathways as well as their degraders, is an area of active research. Since the concept of proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) was introduced in 2001, the paradigm of TPD has been greatly expanded and moved from academia to industry for clinical translation, with small-molecule TPD being particularly represented.

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In this paper, we present an experimental study of L1-FePt granular films with crystalline boron nitride (BN) grain boundary materials for heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). It is found that application of a RF substrate bias (V = -15 V) yields the formation of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanosheets in grain boundaries, facilitating the columnar growth of FePt grains during sputtering at high temperatures. The h-BN monolayers conform to the side surfaces of columnar FePt grains, completely encircling individual FePt grains.

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Nanoparticles (NPs) have broad application prospects in the field of biomedicine due to their excellent physicochemical properties. When entering biological fluids, NPs inevitably encountered proteins and were subsequently surrounded by them, forming the termed protein corona (PC). As PC has been evidenced to have critical roles in deciding the biological fates of NPs, how to precisely characterize PC is vital to promote the clinical translation of nanomedicine by understanding and harnessing NPs' behaviors.

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  • Nanocarriers can enhance drug delivery for various treatments but face challenges, particularly degradation within endosomes/lysosomes after being taken up by cells.
  • The review discusses advanced methods to improve delivery efficiency by facilitating escape from endosomes/lysosomes and using alternative delivery methods that bypass these pathways.
  • Ultimately, the article suggests innovative design strategies for nanodrug delivery systems to overcome these cellular barriers and improve clinical outcomes in the future.
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  • - Cancer is a complex disease caused by genetic mutations that complicate treatment due to issues like tumor heterogeneity and drug resistance.
  • - A variety of treatment options, including nucleic acids and therapeutic drugs, have been explored, but combining these with nanotechnology is proving to enhance effectiveness against cancer.
  • - The review highlights advancements in using nanomedicine for co-delivering drugs and nucleic acids, discusses challenges in clinical application, and outlines future directions for more effective cancer therapies.
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  • The complexity of serum composition makes it challenging to discover new biomarkers for disease diagnosis and prediction using serum proteomics.
  • Researchers developed a strategy using silica-coated iron oxide nanoparticles to enrich low-abundance proteins, identifying 1,070 proteins, which is double that found by traditional methods.
  • This approach was applied to a collagen-induced arthritis model, revealing 485 differentially expressed proteins, with 323 returning to normal levels after methotrexate treatment, suggesting enhanced understanding of disease mechanisms and better biomarker identification for treatment.
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Introduction: Advanced paternal age of reproduction is an increasing trend, especially in developed countries and areas. This trend results in elevated risks of adverse reproductive outcomes such as reduced fertility rates, increased pregnancy loss, and poor childhood health. Yet, a systematic profiling of aging-associated molecular and cellular alterations in testicular tissue is still missing.

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  • New therapeutic strategies for gastric cancer are needed due to low survival rates, with Cadherin 17 (CDH17) serving as a promising target due to its high expression in digestive system cancers.
  • Nanobodies, a new type of antibody, were screened against CDH17 to create an imaging probe and a vehicle for delivering toxins, with two specific nanobodies (A1 and E8) successfully developed for this purpose.
  • The E8 nanobody demonstrated effective tumor targeting and visualization in animal models while also showing significant anti-tumor effects when fused with the toxin PE38, suggesting it could be a valuable therapeutic option for gastric cancer patients.
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It is highly desirable to design a single modality that can simultaneously trigger apoptosis and ferroptosis to efficiently eliminate tumor progression. Herein, a nanosystem based on the intrinsic properties of tumor microenvironment (TME) is designed to achieve tumor control through the simultaneous induction of ferroptosis and apoptosis. CuCP molecules are encapsulated in a liposome-based nanosystem to assemble into biocompatible and stable CuCP nanoparticles (CuCP Lipo NPs).

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Whether or not the anticancer activity of gambogic acid is achieved regulating the cellular metabolic process remains unclear. Here we report that gambogic acid suppresses the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) by covalently inhibiting the 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase (6PGD) protein. This study elucidates the mechanism of action of gambogic acid from the perspective of metabolic reprogramming regulation in cancer cells.

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