Publications by authors named "Denghai Zhang"

Background: As a traditional Chinese medicine monomer derived from Tripterygium wilfordii Hook.f. with potential anticancer activity, celastrol can induce ferroptosis in hepatic stellate cells and inhibit their activation to alleviate liver fibrosis.

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Introduction And Objectives: Ferroptosis is a novel form of cell death driven by iron dependence and lipid peroxidation, presenting a promising potential as an innovative strategy for cancer treatment. Celastrol (Cel) is particularly effective in inducing ferroptosis, but its molecular mechanism remains unclear. The study aims to elucidate the potential mechanism through both in vitro and in vivo experiments.

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Objective: Research has shown that celastrol can effectively treat a variety of diseases, yet when passing a certain dosage threshold, celastrol becomes toxic, causing complications such as liver and kidney damage and erythrocytopenia, among others. With this dichotomy in mind, it is extremely important to find ways to preserve celastrol's efficacy while reducing or preventing its toxicity.

Methods: In this study, insulin-resistant HepG2 (IR-HepG2) cells were prepared using palmitic acid and used for in vitro experiments.

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Hyperglycemia exacerbates ischemic brain injury by up-regulating autophagy. However, the underlying mechanisms are unknown. This study aims to determine whether hyperglycemia activates autophagy through the p53-Sesn2-AMPK signaling pathway.

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Hyperglycemia can exacerbate cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury, and the mechanism involves oxidative stress, apoptosis, autophagy and mitochondrial function. Our previous research showed that selenium (Se) could alleviate this injury. The aim of this study was to examine how selenium alleviates hyperglycemia-mediated exacerbation of cerebral I/R injury by regulating ferroptosis.

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Background: Stroke is the third main reason of mortality, which is the leading reason for adult disability in the globe. Poststroke inflammation is well known to cause acute ischemic stroke- (AIS-) induced brain injury (BI) exacerbation. Celastrol (CL) has exhibited anti-inflammatory activities in various inflammatory traits though underlying mechanisms remain unknown.

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Hyperglycemia aggravates cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury via vascular injury. There is still a lack of effective pharmaceutical preparations for cerebral I/R injury under hyperglycemia. This study aimed to investigate the effects of oxymatrine (OMT) on hyperglycemia-exacerbated cerebral I/R injury in vitro and in vivo.

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Chinese herbal formulas including the lung-cleaning and toxicity-excluding (LCTE) soup have played an important role in treating the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (caused by SARS-CoV-2) in China. Applying LCTE outside of China may prove challenging due to the unfamiliar rationale behind its application in terms of Traditional Chinese Medicine. To overcome this barrier, a biochemical understanding of the clinical effects of LCTE is needed.

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Objective: In this study we execute a rational screen to identify Chinese medical herbs that are commonly used in treating viral respiratory infections and also contain compounds that might directly inhibit 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), an ongoing novel coronavirus that causes pneumonia.

Methods: There were two main steps in the screening process. In the first step we conducted a literature search for natural compounds that had been biologically confirmed as against sever acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus or Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus.

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Exosomes derived from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are known to participate in myocardial repair after myocardial infarction (MI), but the mechanism remains unclear. Here, we isolated exosomes from adipose-derived MSCs (ADSCs) and examined their effect on MI-induced cardiac damage. To examine the underlying mechanism, H9c2 cells, cardiac fibroblasts, and HAPI cells were used to study the effect of ADSC-exosomes on hypoxia-induced H9c2 apoptosis, TGF-β1-induced fibrosis of cardiac fibroblasts, and hypoxia-induced macrophage M1 polarization using qRT-PCR, western blot, ELISA, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence and flow cytometry.

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Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have an important function in human diseases, especially in cancer. circRNA hsa_circ_0014130 (circPIP5K1A), a particularly abundant circRNA, participates in the tumorigenesis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), although the underlying regulatory mechanism remains unclear. Here, we investigated the circPIP5K1A role in NSCLC.

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Objectives: The natural triterpenoid compound celastrol ameliorates insulin resistance (IR) in animal models, but the underlying molecular mechanism is unclear. In this study, we investigated how celastrol regulates IR.

Methods: The HepG2 cellular IR model was initially established with palmitic acid (PA).

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The development of resistance to therapy continues to be a serious clinical problem in lung cancer management. Epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) is one of the most common chemotherapy drugs to treat non-small-cell lung cancer. However, almost all treatments fail after ∼1 year of treatment because of drug tolerance, probably occurring from the threonine 790 mutation (T790M) of the EGFR, resulting in overactivation of the EGFR.

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Elevated plasma statured fatty acids (FFAs) cause TLR4/MD2 activation-dependent inflammation and insulin tolerance, which account for the occurrence and development of obesity. It has been confirmed that statured palmitic acid (PA) (the most abundant FFA) could bind MD2 to cause cellular inflammation. The natural compound celastrol could improve obesity, which is suggested via inhibiting inflammation, yet the detailed mechanism for celastrol is still unclear.

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Background: Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is the most common type of cerebrovascular disease and is a leading cause of disability and death worldwide. Recently, a study suggested that transformation of microglia from the pro-inflammatory M1 state to the anti-inflammatory and tissue-reparative M2 phenotype may be an effective therapeutic strategy for ischemic stroke. Celastrol, a traditional oriental medicine, may have anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects.

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The present study aimed to investigate the role of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and endothelial cells (ECs) in the peripheral blood of patients with gastric cancer (GC), and to investigate vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression and microvessel density (MVD) in GC tissues. First, 6 ml peripheral blood with added anticoagulant was collected from each of the 42 patients with GC, followed by determination of the number of EPCs and ECs by flow cytometry using the surface markers cluster of differentiation (CD)34CD133CD31CD45 and CD34CD133CD31CD45, respectively. VEGF expression in patients with GC was detected by the streptomycin avidin-peroxidase immunohistochemical method, and MVD was calculated using the marker CD34.

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To observe the effects of celastrol on Tau hyperphosphorylation induced by amyloid-β peptides (Aβ) in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells, the changes of Tau hyperphosphorylation and the expression of heat shock protein 90 (HSP90), HSP70, and heat shock factor 1 (HSF-1) in SH-SY5Y cells treated with Aβ and celastrol were measured. Tau hyperphosphorylation and HSP90 expression induced by Aβ was also measured by Western blotting after HSP70 or HSF-1 knockdown by siRNA. The interaction between HSP70 and Tau or HSP70 and carboxyl terminus of HSP70 interacting protein (CHIP) was measured by co-immunoprecipitation.

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We report an 80-year-old male patient with severe rheumatoid arthritis who was treated with tripterygium glycoside, an immunosuppressive agent made from the extract of a Chinese medicinal herb called Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F. The patient had no apparent skin lesions before the treatment, but he developed aggressive hyperkeratotic lesions with rapid progression after using tripterygium glycoside. He was repeatedly diagnosed with eczema, but treatment failed to achieve efficacy.

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The aims of the present study were to establish a single-platform flow cytometry method using 5-(and 6)-carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester (CFSE)-labeled microspheres as the reference for determining endothelial progenitor cell (EPC) number and to evaluate the efficacy of this detection method. Single-platform flow cytometry was used to count cell numbers using CFSE-stained fluorescent microspheres as the internal reference and the EPC numbers in specimens using this novel method were compared with an clonogenic counting assay. The results of the two counting methods were consistent and compared with the clonogenic counting assay, the time and cost of the novel method was markedly reduced, as were the corresponding technical requirements.

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The aim of the present study was to investigate the early diagnostic values of measuring procalcitonin (PCT), C-reactive protein (CRP), and interleukin-6 (lL-6) levels in patients with bacterial infections and septicopyemia. Ninety-two patients with septicopyemia who were diagnosed and treated in the First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University between December 2012 and October 2013 were randomly selected. Based on results of hemoculture, the patients were divided into the Gram-negative bacterial infection group (n=47) and the Gram-positive bacterial infection group (n=45).

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Background: Overuse with antibiotics in the treatment of infectious diseases has become a central focus of public health over the years. The aim of this study was to provide an up-to-date evaluation of the blood test-guided antibiotic use on patients with acute diarrhea in primary hospitals of China.

Materials And Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 330 patients with acute diarrhea in Shanghai, People's Republic of China, from March 2013 to February 2016.

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Celastrol, a natural compound derived from the Chinese herb Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F, has been proven to inhibit heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) activity and has attracted much attention because of its promising effects in cancer treatment and in ameliorating degenerative neuron diseases. However, the HSP90 structure involved in celastrol interaction is not known. Here, we report a novel celastrol-binding pocket in the HSP90 dimer, predicted by molecular docking.

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Objective: Celastrol has been established as a nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) activation inhibitor; however, the exact mechanism behind this action is still unknown. Using text-mining technology, the authors predicted that interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinases (IRAKs) are potential celastrol targets, and hypothesized that targeting IRAKs might be one way that celastrol inhibits NF-κB. This is because IRAKs are key molecules for some crucial pathways to activate NF-κB (e.

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Background: Celastrol is a novel anti-tumor agent. Ways to further enhance this effect of celastrol has attracted much research attention.

Methods And Results: Here, we report that celastrol treatment can elevate miR-223 in human breast cancer cell line MCF-7 and prostate cancer PC3.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the prototypical inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS), and MS results in physical and cognitive impairments, such as fatigue, pain, depression and bladder dysfunction. Though many therapies for MS have been developed, the safety profile and effectiveness of these therapies still need to be defined. Thus, new therapies for MS must be explored.

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