Publications by authors named "Weilun Sun"

Interleukin 6 (IL-6), produced by immune cells, is crucial in promoting T cell trafficking to infection and inflammation sites, influencing various physiological and pathological processes. Concentrations of IL-6 and other cytokines and chemokines can influence T cell differentiation and activation. Understanding the dual faces of IL-6 within the tumor microenvironment is crucial to understanding its role.

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The sedative and hypnotic properties of 5,7,3',4',5'-pentamethoxyflavone (PMF), a monomer extracted from the leaves of Murraya paniculata (L.) Jack, have been reported. However, the role of PMFs in the development of anxiety remains uncertain.

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Microglia continuously remodel synapses, which are embedded in the extracellular matrix (ECM). However, the mechanisms, which govern this process remain elusive. To investigate the influence of the neural ECM in synaptic remodeling by microglia, we disrupted ECM integrity by injection of chondroitinase ABC (ChABC) into the retrosplenial cortex of healthy adult mice.

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Aim: Animals exhibit physiological changes designed to eliminate the perceived danger, provoking similar symptoms of fever. However, a high-grade fever indicates poor clinical outcomes. Caspase11 (Casp11) is involved in many inflammatory diseases.

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  • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) involves an autoimmune response linked to T helper 1 and 17 cell activation, with the immune regulator PD-L1 playing a crucial role in maintaining tolerance.
  • Research analyzed the expression of PD-L1 on dendritic cells in people with COPD compared to healthy individuals, revealing a significant decrease in PD-L1 levels in COPD patients.
  • Results indicated that lower PD-L1 in conventional dendritic cells is associated with worsening COPD and heightened T cell activity, highlighting the potential for PD-L1 as a target for immune modulation in treatment.
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Introduction: Hyperphosphorylation and aggregation of the microtubule-associated protein tau cause the development of tauopathies, such as Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). We recently uncovered a causal link between constitutive serotonin receptor 7 (5-HT7R) activity and pathological tau aggregation. Here, we evaluated 5-HT7R inverse agonists as novel drugs in the treatment of tauopathies.

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Dysregulated cortical expression of the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) and deficits of its associated polysialic acid (polySia) have been found in Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia. However, the functional role of polySia in cortical synaptic plasticity remains poorly understood. Here, we show that acute enzymatic removal of polySia in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) slices leads to increased transmission mediated by the GluN1/GluN2B subtype of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs), increased NMDAR-mediated extrasynaptic tonic currents, and impaired long-term potentiation (LTP).

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Remodeling of synapses by microglia is essential for synaptic plasticity in the brain. However, during neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative diseases, microglia can induce excessive synaptic loss, although the precise underlying mechanisms are unknown. To directly observe microglia-synapse interactions under inflammatory conditions, we performed in vivo two-photon time-lapse imaging of microglia-synapse interactions after bacterial lipopolysaccharide administration to model systemic inflammation, or after inoculation of Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain extracts to model disease-associated neuroinflammatory microglial response.

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  • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) poses significant global health challenges, and this study investigates the effectiveness of two specific indicators, the distance-saturation product (DSP) from the 6-min walk test and low-attenuation area percentage (LAA%), in assessing COPD stability and mortality risk.
  • The study involved a retrospective analysis of 111 COPD patients in northern Taiwan, examining various clinical parameters such as pulmonary function tests (PFT), quality of life assessments, and acute exacerbation history to explore links between DSP, LAA%, and these parameters.
  • Results indicated that patients with a low DSP (<290 m%) experienced worse quality of life and higher acute exacerbation frequency, while significant
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Background: The interactions between tumor cells and the host immune system play a crucial role in lung cancer progression and resistance to treatment. The alterations of EGFR signaling have the potential to produce an ineffective tumor-associated immune microenvironment by upregulating a series of immune suppressors, including inhibitory immune checkpoints, immunosuppressive cells, and cytokines. Elevated Heparin-binding EGF-like growth factor (HB-EGF) expression, one EGFR ligand correlated with higher histology grading, worse patient prognosis, and lower overall survival rate, acts as a chemotactic factor.

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Dysregulation of dopaminergic transmission induced by the HIV-1 transactivator of transcription (Tat) has been implicated as a central factor in the development of HIV-1 associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). We have demonstrated that the tyrosine470 residue of the human dopamine transporter (hDAT) plays a critical role in Tat-hDAT interaction. Based on the computational modeling predictions, the present study sought to examine the mutational effects of the tyrosine467 residue of the human norepinephrine transporter (hNET), a corresponding residue of the hDAT tyrosine470, on Tat-induced inhibition of reuptake of dopamine through the hNET.

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  • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) continues to be a significant global health issue, complicated by a lack of effective treatments and reliable molecular biomarkers for diagnosis.
  • Recent findings suggest that the long noncoding RNA lnc-IL7R could play a critical role in regulating inflammation and stress responses in COPD, but its specific functions in lung health are not yet fully understood.
  • In a study of 125 COPD patients, lnc-IL7R levels were strongly associated with lung function and could effectively differentiate COPD patients from healthy individuals, indicating its potential as a biomarker for disease progression and stratification.
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Background: There is a link between exposure to air pollution and the increased prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and declining pulmonary function, but the association with O desaturation during exercise in COPD patients with emphysema is unclear. Our aims were to estimate the prevalence of O desaturation during exercise in patients with COPD, and determine the association of exposure to air pollution with exercise-induced desaturation (EID), the degree of emphysema, and dynamic hyperinflation (DH).

Methods: We assessed the effects of 10-year prior to the HRCT assessment and 7 days prior to the six-minute walking test exposure to particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of < 10 µm (PM) or of < 2.

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Article Synopsis
  • Long-term exposure to particulate matter (PM) is linked to lung damage and emphysema in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients, with a focus on the long noncoding RNA lnc-IL7R's role in oxidative stress-induced cellular damage.
  • The study found that lnc-IL7R levels decreased in COPD patients, correlating negatively with emphysema and PM exposure, while higher levels in normal cells helped protect against cellular aging and damage.
  • Ultimately, lnc-IL7R mediates the suppression of harmful p21 expression through epigenetic mechanisms, suggesting its dysfunction could worsen cell injury in COPD.
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Phage is a promising therapeutic agent for treating antibiotic resistant bacteria. However, in the process of treatment, phage may be cleared by the immune system and cleaved by protease, which could affect the efficacy of phage. In order to solve the above problems, phage encapsulation is usually adopted.

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Article Synopsis
  • Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) presents treatment challenges due to its varied symptoms and responses to therapy, and while progress has been made in understanding its biology, identifying specific biomarkers to assess disease severity and treatment outcomes is ongoing.
  • The study aimed to evaluate multiple factors as potential indicators of disease severity and treatment success in Taiwanese patients with COPD emphysema, hypothesizing that a multi-variable model would be more effective than a single variable approach.
  • Over 125 patients were analyzed using advanced techniques, revealing significant associations between body mass index (BMI), air quality pollutants, and disease progression, highlighting the importance of geospatial factors in understanding COPD severity.
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Aberrant activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR/ERBB1) by erythroblastic leukemia viral oncogene homolog (ERBB) ligands contributes to various tumor malignancies, including lung cancer and colorectal cancer (CRC). Epiregulin (EREG) is one of the EGFR ligands and is low expressed in most normal tissues. Elevated EREG in various cancers mainly activates EGFR signaling pathways and promotes cancer progression.

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The retrosplenial cortex (RSC) has diverse functional inputs and is engaged by various sensory, spatial, and associative learning tasks. We examine how multiple functional aspects are integrated on the single-cell level in the RSC and how the encoding of task-related parameters changes across learning. Using a visuospatial context discrimination paradigm and two-photon calcium imaging in behaving mice, a large proportion of dysgranular RSC neurons was found to encode multiple task-related dimensions while forming context-value associations across learning.

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  • * Chronic exposure to 3-NBA results in specific genetic changes that promote cancer development, influencing pathways related to metabolism, cancer spread, and blood vessel formation.
  • * The signaling pathway involving EREG is crucial for the tumorigenic effects of 3-NBA, where its overexpression enhances cancer cell survival and migration, correlating with poor outcomes in lung cancer patients.
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HIV-1 transactivator of transcription (Tat) has a great impact on the development of HIV-1 associated neurocognitive disorders through disrupting dopamine transmission. This study determined the mutational effects of human dopamine transporter (hDAT) on basal and Tat-induced inhibition of dopamine transport. Compared to wild-type hDAT, the maximal velocity (V) of [H]dopamine uptake was decreased in D381L and Y88F/D206L/H547A, increased in D206L/H547A, and unaltered in D206L.

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In the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD), microglia are transformed to an activated phenotype with thickened and retracted processes, migrate to the site of amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques, and proliferate. In the early stages of AD, it is still poorly understood whether the microglial function is altered and which factors may regulate these changes. Here, we focused on studying microglia in the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) in 3- to 4-month-old 5xFAD mice as a transgenic mouse model of AD.

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High dynamic range (HDR) has wide applications involving intelligent vision sensing which includes enhanced electronic imaging, smart surveillance, self-driving cars, intelligent medical diagnosis, etc. Exposure fusion is an essential HDR technique which fuses different exposures of the same scene into an HDR-like image. However, determining the appropriate fusion weights is difficult because each differently exposed image only contains a subset of the scene's details.

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Two-photon imaging of fluorescently labeled microglia provides a direct approach to measure motility of microglial processes as a readout of microglial function that is crucial in the context of neurodegenerative diseases, as well as to understand the neuroinflammatory response to implanted substrates and brain-computer interfaces. In this longitudinal study, we quantified surveilling and photodamage-directed microglial processes motility in both acute and chronic cranial window preparations and compared the motility under isoflurane and ketamine anesthesia to an awake condition in the same animal. The isoflurane anesthesia increased the length of surveilling microglial processes in both acute and chronic preparations, while ketamine increased the number of microglial branches in acute preparation only.

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Dysregulation of dopaminergic system induced by HIV-1 Tat protein-mediated direct inhibition of the dopamine transporter (DAT) has been implicated as a mediating factor of HIV-1 associated neurocognitive disorders. We have reported that single point mutations on human DAT (hDAT) at tyrosine88 (Y88F), lysine92 (K92M), and histidine547 (H547A) differentially regulate basal dopamine uptake but diminish Tat-induced inhibition of dopamine uptake by changing dopamine transport process. This study evaluated the effects of double (Y88F/H547A) and triple (Y88F/K92M/H547A) mutations on basal dopamine uptake, Tat-induced inhibition of DAT function, and dynamic transport process.

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