Publications by authors named "Junfa Xu"

Background: Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is the leading cause of chronic kidney disease globally. Recent research has identified insulin-like growth factor-binding proteins 2 (IGFBP2) and 4 (IGFBP4) as potential biomarkers for DKD. Overactivation of the complement pathway in DKD remains poorly understood.

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Copper is a vital trace element crucial for mediating interactions between and macrophages. Within these immune cells, copper modulates oxidative stress responses and signaling pathways, enhancing macrophage immune functions and facilitating clearance. Conversely, copper may promote escape from macrophages through various mechanisms: inhibiting macrophage activity, diminishing phagocytic and bactericidal capacities, and supporting survival and proliferation.

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The mammalian gastrointestinal tract quickly becomes densely populated with foreign microorganisms shortly after birth, thereby establishing a lifelong presence of a microbial community. These commensal gut microbiota serve various functions, such as providing nutrients, processing ingested compounds, maintaining gut homeostasis, and shaping the intestinal structure in the host. Dysbiosis, which is characterized by an imbalance in the microbial community, is closely linked to numerous human ailments and has recently emerged as a key factor in health prognosis.

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Article Synopsis
  • Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), poses a significant global health threat due to Mtb's ability to evade immune responses and complicate treatment efforts.
  • Host-directed therapy (HDT) has emerged as a new strategy that leverages the body’s immune system, particularly through the processes of autophagy and phagosomal maturation, to enhance defenses against TB.
  • The incorporation of modified nanomaterials in medical treatments shows promise for improving the effectiveness and safety of therapies against TB by potentially enhancing autophagy and regulating the immune response in host cells.
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  • * Researchers have developed mannose-modified mesoporous polydopamine nanosystems (Man-mPDA NPs) to target macrophages for delivering the anti-TB drug rifampicin, and to use photothermal therapy (PTT) for killing Mtb-infected macrophages.
  • * The Rif@Man-mPDA NPs not only enhance drug delivery and effective thermal treatment, but also boost the immune response in host cells, reducing Mtb loads and tissue damage in a mouse model, presenting a promising new approach for CTB treatment
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  • Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global health threat, and enhancing treatment effectiveness, especially against drug-resistant strains, is a significant challenge.
  • A new graphene oxide-based system (GO-PEI-MAN) has been designed to deliver antibiotics and autophagy inducers specifically to macrophages, improving the ability to kill the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria.
  • This system showed promising results, as it effectively enhanced drug delivery and immune response, leading to better Mtb killing in infected macrophages and reduced bacterial levels in infected mice, without causing toxicity.
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Tuberculosis (TB), a deadly infectious disease induced by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), continues to be a global public health issue that kill millions of patents every year. Despite significant efforts have been paid to identify effective TB treatments, the emergence of drug-resistant strains of the disease and the presence of comorbidities in TB patients urges us to explore the detailed mechanisms involved in TB immunity and develop more effective innovative anti-TB strategies. HIF-1α, a protein involved in regulating cellular immune responses during TB infection, has been highlighted as a promising target for the development of novel strategies for TB treatment due to its critical roles in anti-TB host immunity.

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Objective To prepare anti-human B7 homolog 4 (B7-H4) egg yolk immunoglobulins (IgY) polyclonal antibody and establish a double-antibody sandwich ELISA for the detection of soluble B7-H4 (sB7-H4) protein in human serum. Methods Bioinformatics was used to screen specific B cell epitope peptides of human sB7-H4. New Hyland Grey laying hens were immunized with these peptides, and the eggs from the immunized hens were collected to purify chicken anti-human B7-H4 IgY antibody.

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Purpose: To investigate the correlation between M1/M2 macrophages (M1/M2 Mφ) and cell death mode under (Mtb) infection.

Methods: Raw gene expression profiles were collected from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Genes related to different cell death modes were collected from the KEGG, FerrDb and GSEA databases.

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Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a complex mental disorder that involves alterations in signal transmission across multiple scales and structural abnormalities. The development of effective antidepressants (ADs) has been hindered by the dominance of monoamine hypothesis, resulting in slow progress. Traditional ADs have undesirable traits like delayed onset of action, limited efficacy, and severe side effects.

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Iron, copper, and zinc play integral roles in the battle against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection; however, they are often trapped between nutrients and toxins, posing a significant challenge to macrophages and Mtb to utilize them. Due to this two-sided effect, macrophages and Mtb strictly regulate metal uptake, storage, and excretion. This review discusses the balanced regulation of iron, copper, and zinc in macrophages and Mtb during infection, focusing on the intracellular metal regulatory system.

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Chemotherapy often faces some obstacles such as low targeting effects and drug resistance, which introduce the low therapeutic efficiency and strong side effects. Recent advances in nanotechnology allows the use of novel nanosystems for targeted drug delivery, although the chemically synthesized nanomaterials always show unexpected low biocompability. The emergence of exosome research has offered a better understanding of disease treatment and created novel opportunities for developing effective drug delivery systems with high biocompability.

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Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection, is still one of the top killers worldwide among infectious diseases. The escape of Mtb from immunological clearance and the low targeting effects of anti-TB drugs remain the substantial challenges for TB control. Iron is particularly required for Mtb growth but also toxic for Mtb in high dosages, which makes iron an ideal toxic decoy for the 'iron-tropic' Mtb.

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Tuberculosis (TB), one of the top ten causes of death globally induced by the infection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), remains a grave public health issue worldwide. With almost one-third of the world's population getting infected by Mtb, between 5% and 10% of these infected individuals are predicted to develop active TB disease, which would not only result in severe tissue damage and necrosis, but also pose serious threats to human life. However, the exact molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis and immunology of TB remain unclear, which significantly restricts the effective control of TB epidemics.

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() infection elicits macrophage polarization into M2 phenotype to block the host's protective immune response. However, it remains unclear how regulates macrophage polarization. Recent studies have suggested that noncoding RNA may play a role in macrophage polarization.

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As an essential micronutrient, manganese plays an important role in the physiological process and immune process. In recent decades, cGAS-STING pathway, which can congenitally recognize exogenous and endogenous DNA for activation, has been widely reported to play critical roles in the innate immunity against some important diseases, such as infections and tumor. Manganese ion (Mn) has been recently proved to specifically bind with cGAS and activate cGAS-STING pathway as a potential cGAS agonist, however, is significantly restricted by the low stability of Mn for further medical application.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Researchers found elevated levels of IL-37b and IL-37b-producing monocytes in DF patients, primarily produced by monocytes rather than lymphocytes, alongside increased levels of other cytokines like IL-6 and IL-10.
  • * The study highlights a negative correlation between IL-37b-producing monocytes and serum IFN-α levels and platelet counts, suggesting complex interactions in the immune response of DF patients.
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Manganese (Mn), a nutrient inorganic trace element, is necessary for a variety of physiological processes of animal body due to their important roles in oxidative regulation effects and other aspects of activities. Moreover, manganese ion (Mn) has widely reported to be crucial for the regulations of different immunological responses, thus showing promising application as potential adjuvants and immunotherapeutics. Taking the advantages of Mn-based biological and immunological activities, Manganese dioxide nanoparticles (MnO NPs) are a new type of inorganic nanomaterials with numerous advantages, including simple preparation, low cost, environmental friendliness, low toxicity, biodegradable metabolism and high bioavailability.

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Autophagy, one of the major intracellular degradation systems, plays an important role in maintaining normal cellular physiological functions and protecting organisms from different diseases. Selenium (Se), an essential trace element, is involved in many metabolic regulatory signaling events and plays a key role in human health. In recent years, selenium nanoparticles (Se NPs) have attracted increasing attentions in biomedical field due to their low toxicity, high bioavailability and high bioactivity.

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Introduction: As a deadly disease induced by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), tuberculosis remains one of the top killers among infectious diseases. The low intracellular Mtb killing efficiency of current antibiotics introduced the long duration anti-TB therapy in clinic with strong side effects and increased drug-resistant mutants. Therefore, the exploration of novel anti-TB agents with potent anti-TB efficiency becomes one of the most urgent issues for TB therapies.

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Tuberculosis (TB), induced by the foxy (Mtb), is still one of the top killers worldwide among infectious diseases. Although several antibiotics have been developed to significantly relieve the tuberculosis epidemics worldwide, there are still several important scientific challenges for tuberculosis. As one of the most critical issues for tuberculosis control, the accurate and timely diagnosis of tuberculosis is critical for the following therapy of tuberculosis and thus responsible for the effective control of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

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Infectious diseases remain the most serious public health issue, which requires the development of more effective strategies for infectious control. As a kind of ultra-trace element, cobalt is essential to the metabolism of different organisms. In recent decades, nanotechnology has attracted increasing attention worldwide due to its wide application in different areas, including medicine.

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To date, it has been confirmed that the occurrence and development of infectious diseases are tightly associated with regulatory cell death processes, such as apoptosis, autophagy, and necroptosis. Ferroptosis, as a newly discovered form of regulatory cell death characterized by iron-dependent lipid peroxidation, is not only closely associated with tumor progression, but is also found to be tightly related to the regulation of infectious diseases, such as Tuberculosis, Cryptococcal meningitis, Malaria and COVID-2019. The emerging critical roles of ferroptosis that has been found in infectious disease highlight ferroptosis as a potential therapeutic target in this field, which is therefore widely expected to be developed into new therapy strategy against infectious diseases.

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Tuberculosis (TB), caused by (Mtb) infection, remains one of the most threatening infectious diseases worldwide. A series of challenges still exist for TB prevention, diagnosis and treatment, which therefore require more attempts to clarify the pathological and immunological mechanisms in the development and progression of TB. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a large class of non-coding RNA, mostly expressed in eukaryotic cells, which are generated by the spliceosome through the back-splicing of linear RNAs.

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Deciphering the crosstalk between RNA-binding proteins and corresponding RNAs will provide a better understanding of gastric cancer (GC) progression. The comprehensive bioinformatics study identified cytoplasmic polyadenylation element-binding protein 3 (CPEB3) might play a vital role in GC progression. Then we found CPEB3 was downregulated in GC and correlated with prognosis.

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