Background: Progress in immunotherapy for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has been slow, yet the relationship between microorganisms and metabolites is crucial to PDAC development. This study compares the biliary microbiota and metabolomic profiles of PDAC patients with those of benign pancreatic disease patients to investigate PDAC pathogenesis and its relationship with immunotherapy.
Methods: A total of 27 patients were recruited, including 15 diagnosed with PDAC and 12 with benign pancreaticobiliary conditions, all of whom underwent surgical treatment.
Introduction: Cannabinoids are reported to suppress the growth of ovarian cancer cells, but it is unclear whether structural modifications can improve their cytotoxic effects.
Methods: Herein, an investigation into the antiproliferative effects of natural cannabinoids on human ovarian cancer Caov-3 cells identified cannabidiol (CBD) as the most promising cannabinoid. Furthermore, chemical modifications of CBD yielded a group of derivatives with enhanced cytotoxicity in Caov-3 cells.
The misuse and abuse of antibiotics have led to the increase of drug resistance and the emergence of multi-drug resistant bacteria. Therefore, it is an urgent need to develop novel antimicrobial agents to address this problem. Natural products (NPs) could provide an effective strategy for the discovery of drug due to their wide range of source and biological activities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaterials (Basel)
October 2024
The fatigue behavior of metal specimens is influenced by defects, material properties, and loading. This study aims to establish a multi-scale fatigue crack growth model that describes physically short crack (PSC) and long crack (LC) behavior. The model allows the calculation of crack growth rates for uniaxial loading at different stress ratios based on the material properties and specimen geometry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMedicine (Baltimore)
August 2024
The short-video application TikTok shows great potential for disseminating health information. We assessed the content, sources, and quality of information in videos related to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) on TikTok. Our study aims to identify upload sources, content, and characteristic information for NAFLD videos on TikTok and further evaluate factors related to video quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The TetR family of transcriptional regulators (TFRs), serving as crucial regulators of diverse cellular processes, undergo conformational changes induced by small-molecule ligands, which either inhibit or activate them to modulate target gene expression. Some ligands of TFRs in actinomycetes and their regulatory effects have been identified and studied; however, regulatory mechanisms of the TetR family in the lincomycin-producing Streptomyces lincolnensis remain poorly understood.
Results: In this study, we found that AbrT (SLCG_1979), a TetR family regulator, plays a pivotal role in regulating lincomycin production and morphological development in S.
The medium-intensity karst desertification environment is typically characterized by more rocks and less soil. The abandoned land in the construction areas of the dry-hot river valley hydropower station has more infertile soil, severe land degradation, and very low land productivity. Therefore, it is urgent to improve the soil quality to curb the increasingly degrading land and reuse the construction site.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rapid emergence of antibiotic resistance and the scarcity of novel antibacterial agents have necessitated an urgent pursuit for the discovery and development of novel antibacterial agents against multidrug-resistant bacteria. This study involved the design and synthesis of series of novel indole-benzosulfonamide oleanolic acid (OA) derivatives, in which the indole and benzosulfonamide pharmacophores were introduced into the OA skeleton semisynthetically. These target OA derivatives show antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus strains in vitro and in vivo.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMetallophilic interactions are the widespread interactions in multimetal clusters to orientate closed-shell metal self-assembly form linear, facet, or block clusters. The closed-shell metal cation does not have empty valence orbitals, but is able to attract each other. It is still a conundrum to understand the resource in balancing the strong Coulomb repulsion between two cations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Alcohol consumption alters the diversity and metabolic activities of gut microbiota, leading to intestinal barrier dysfunction and contributing to the development of alcoholic liver disease (ALD), which is the most prevalent cause of advanced liver diseases. In this study, we investigated the protective effects and action mechanism of an aqueous extraction of and (PFE) on alcoholic liver injury.
Methods: C57BL/6 mice were used to establish the mouse model of alcoholic liver injury and orally administered 500 and 1,000 mg/kg/d of PFE for 2 weeks.
The role of lncRNA and circRNA in wheat grain development is still unclear. The objectives of this study were to characterize the lncRNA and circRNA in the wheat grain development and to construct the interaction network among lncRNA, circRNA, and their target miRNA to propose a lncRNA-circRNA-miRNA module related to wheat grain development. Full transcriptome sequencing on two wheat varieties (Annong 0942 and Anke 2005) with significant differences in 1000-grain weight at 10 d (days after pollination), 20 d, and 30 d of grain development were conducted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe overuse of synthetic insecticides has led to various negative consequences, including insecticide resistance, environmental pollution, and harm to public health. This may be ameliorated by using insecticides derived from botanical sources. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the anti-mosquito activity of the essential oil (EO) of Blanco cv.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe practice of Chinese herbal medicines for the treatment of COVID-19 in China played an essential role for the control of mortality rate and reduction of recovery time. The iridoids is one of the main constituents of many heat-clearing and detoxifying Chinese medicines that were largely planted and frequently used in clinical practice. Twenty-three representative high content iridoids from several staple Chinese medicines were obtained and tested by a SARS-CoV-2 pseudo-virus entry-inhibition assay on HEK-293 T/ACE2 cells, a live HCoV-OC43 virus infection assay on HRT-18 cells, and a SARS-CoV-2 3CL protease inhibitory FRET assay followed by molecular docking simulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFType 2 diabetes mellitus is regarded as a chronic metabolic disease characterized by hyperglycemia. Long-term hyperglycemia may result in oxidative stress, damage pancreatic β-cell function and induce insulin resistance. Herein we explored the anti-hypoglycemic effects and mechanisms of action of N--coumaroyloctopamine (N-p-CO) and .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: To describe the past, present and future burden of pancreatitis in older adults, and to explore cross-national inequalities across socio-demographic index (SDI).
Methods: Data on pancreatitis in older adults, including mortality and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) rates, were collected from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 study. Temporal trends were measured using joinpoint analyses and predicted using a Bayesian age-period-cohort model.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces
April 2024
Carbon Quantum dots (CQDs) are widely studied because of their good optical and electronic characteristics and because they can easily generate photocarriers. Nitrogen-doped CQDs (NCQDs) may exhibit improved hydrophilic, optical, and electron-transfer properties, which are conducive to photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. In this paper, NCQD-modified ZnS catalysts were successfully prepared.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The pivotal roles of both abundant and rare bacteria in ecosystem function are widely acknowledged. Despite this, the diversity elevational patterns of these two bacterial taxa in different seasons and influencing factors remains underexplored, especially in the case of rare bacteria.
Methods: Here, a metabarcoding approach was employed to investigate elevational patterns of these two bacterial communities in different seasons and tested the roles of soil physico-chemical properties in structuring these abundant and rare bacterial community.
The complex preparation, weak wet tissue adhesion, and limited biological activity of traditional oral wound dressings usually impede their efficient treatment and healing for diabetic oral mucosal defects. To overcome these problems, a novel hydrogel adhesive (named CFT hydrogel) is rapidly constructed using a one-step method based on dual-dynamic covalent cross-linking. Compared with the commercial oral patches, the CFT hydrogel shows superior in vivo (rat tongue) wet tissue adhesion performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Xray Sci Technol
April 2024
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the leading causes of blindness. However, because the data distribution of classes is not always balanced, it is challenging for automated early DR detection using deep learning techniques. In this paper, we propose an adaptive weighted ensemble learning method for DR detection based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) images.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGemcitabine (GEM) is a standard chemotherapeutic agent for patients with pancreatic cancer; however, GEM-based chemotherapy has a high rate of toxicity. A combination of GEM and active constituents from natural products may enhance its therapeutic efficacy and reduce its toxicity. This study investigated the synergistic effects of the combination of liriopesides B (LirB) from Liriope spicata var.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLeaf respiration in the light (Rlight) is crucial for understanding the net CO2 exchange of individual plants and entire ecosystems. However, Rlight is poorly quantified and rarely discussed in the context of the leaf economic spectrum (LES), especially among woody species differing in plant functional types (PFTs) (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDrug-resistant bacterium infections are a severe threat to public health and novel antimicrobial agents combating drug-resistant bacteria are an unmet medical need. Although cannabidiol (CBD) has been reported to show antibacterial effects, whether its antibacterial activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can be improved remains unclear. Herein, a series of novel CBD derivatives were designed and synthesized using various chemical approaches including amidation, Friedel-Crafts alkylation, and Negishi cross-coupling reaction for the modifications at the C-7, C-2', C-4', and C-6' positions of CBD skeleton.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Phys Chem A
September 2023
The aromaticity of π-conjugated compounds has long been a confusing issue. Based on a recently emerged two-dimensional (2D) superatomic-molecule theory, a unified rule was built to decipher the aromaticity of cyclic superatomic molecules of π-conjugated compounds from the chemical bonding perspective. Herein, a series of planar []helicenes and []circulenes, composed of benzene, thiophene, or furfuran, are systemically studied and seen as superatomic molecules OF or O, where superatoms F and O denote π-conjugated units with 5 and 4 π electrons, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Identifying past temporal trends in non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)-associated liver cancer (NALC) can increase public awareness of the disease and facilitate future policy development.
Methods: Annual deaths and age-standardized death rates (ASDR) for NALC from 1990 to 2019 were collected from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 study. The long-term trend and the critical inflection of mortality of NALC were detected by Joinpoint analysis.