Publications by authors named "Xiaojin Zhang"

Background: Pheochromocytomas (PCCs) are rare neuroendocrine catecholamine (CA)-secreting tumours that originate from chromaffin tissue and can produce and store CAs. Unexpected PCCs pose a serious threat to the perioperative safety of patients and a considerable challenge to anaesthesiologists because of the risks of fatal hypertensive crises and other stresses.

Case Presentation: A 37-year-old woman who was scheduled for tonsillectomy and palatopharyngoplasty under general anaesthesia experienced a malignant cardiovascular event after induction, which was characterized mainly by a sharp increase in heart rate and blood pressure, ultimately leading to cardiac arrest and the occurrence of secondary long QT syndrome.

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Porous materials are widely used in the adsorption field to sequester pollutants to address the global sustainable water security and water scarcity concerns. However, there are still challenges that limit their industrial application, especially the required rational design and construction of porous structures. Here, we report a high-swelling cyclodextrin polymer (His-CDP) that is facilely synthesized without additional design and templates, to achieve high affinity, non-specific and rapid adsorption of pollutants.

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Nanopore/nanochannel sensing is a promising analytical method in the fields of chemistry and biology. However, due to the interference of non-analytes in complex samples, directly analyzing un-pretreated samples through nanopores/nanochannels remains a great challenge. Here, we report a type of heterogeneous membrane by covering anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) cylindrical nanochannel porous membrane with graphene oxide/calcium alginate (GCA) hybrid hydrogel to reduce the interference of protein on the current detection signal.

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Objective: Over-activated immune response in hearts is the main pathological feature of septic cardiomyopathy, a fatal complication of sepsis with high mortality. Autophagy is capable to limit immune response by removing inflammatory mediators. Heat shock protein A12A (HSPA12A) encodes an atypical member of HSP70 family.

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Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is one of the leading causes of female infertility. To date, the genetic etiology of POI has been elucidated in approximately 20-25% of the total cases. The human zona pellucida (ZP) plays an important role in the organization and differentiation of granulosa cells, follicle formation, and sperm recognition.

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Low-grade heat is abundant and ubiquitous, but it is generally discarded due to the lack of cost-effective recovery technologies. Ion thermoelectric cells are an affordable and straightforward approach of converting low-grade heat into usable electricity for sustainable power. Despite their potential, ion thermoelectric cells face challenges such as limited Seebeck coefficient and required series integration.

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Genetic loss of the 2-oxoglutarate oxygenase factor inhibiting hypoxia-inducible factor (FIH) enhances both glycolysis and aerobic metabolism. FIH is thus a potential target for adiposity control and improving hepatic steatosis. We describe development of a series of novel, potent, and selective FIH inhibitors that occupy both the FIH catalytic site and a recently defined tyrosine conformational-flip pocket.

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Article Synopsis
  • * The study employs high-throughput single-cell sequencing to analyze the AS microbiome, revealing 27.5% of genomes as potential novel species and uncovering significant microbial "dark matter" and a range of antibiotic resistance genes.
  • * Findings enhance our understanding of genetic diversity and horizontal gene transfer in the AS microbiome, providing valuable insights for monitoring antibiotic resistance and contributing to health risk assessment efforts.
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  • Scientists studied a protein called HSPA12A, which is important for kidney cells to recover after they get damaged.
  • They found that when these kidney cells were low on oxygen and then got it back, HSPA12A levels dropped, but it could help the cells grow more if it was acting in the right way.
  • The research suggests that targeting HSPA12A could be a new way to help kidney cells heal better after they’ve been hurt.
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Proliferation of renal tubular epithelial cells (TEC) is essential for restoring tubular integrity and thereby to support renal functional recovery from kidney ischemia/reperfusion (KI/R) injury. Activation of transcriptional factor c-Myc promotes TEC proliferation following KI/R; however, the mechanism regarding c-Myc activation in TEC is incompletely known. Heat shock protein A12A (HSPA12A) is an atypic member of HSP70 family.

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  • Neuroinflammation plays a significant role in worsening neurodegenerative diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but existing treatments focusing only on this inflammation have not been effective in clinical trials.
  • Previous research has shown that correcting motor neurons and astrocytes improves ALS outcomes, yet mice still face mortality due to persistent inflammation, indicating a need for a more comprehensive approach.
  • The study introduces a new treatment combining galectin-1 to target microglia with AAV9-mediated SOD1 suppression, resulting in reduced inflammation and improved survival rates in ALS mouse models, emphasizing the importance of addressing inflammatory microglia in future therapies.
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  • - The study explores how ion transport through biological ion channels is influenced by both channel structure and phospholipid membrane composition, particularly focusing on the effect of anionic lipids on ion currents.
  • - Researchers developed a biomimetic nanochannel system by integrating DNA nanotechnology with graphene oxide to create programmable DNA scaffold networks, which can adjust membrane composition for enhanced ion current.
  • - By varying the number of DNA scaffold layers and using DNAzymes for membrane modulation, they achieved a significant enhancement in ion transport, paving the way for applications in areas such as environmental protection and biosensor development.
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  • - The main treatments for hyperuricemia and gout are xanthine oxidase (XO) inhibitors and urate transporter 1 (URAT1) inhibitors, but these have limitations in effectiveness and safety.
  • - Researchers developed a new dual inhibitor that targets both XO and URAT1 to potentially improve treatment outcomes and reduce toxicity.
  • - This new compound showed strong inhibition of both targets and favorable safety profiles in animal studies, making it a promising candidate for gout treatment.
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  • Quantum computing offers advanced computational power that could transform drug discovery, but current studies often only serve as basic tests without tackling real-world challenges.
  • This research introduces a hybrid quantum computing pipeline that targets actual drug design problems, moving beyond typical studies to create practical solutions.
  • The study focuses on two key areas: accurately determining Gibbs free energy for prodrug activation and simulating covalent bond interactions, aiming to incorporate quantum computing into real-world drug development processes.
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In animals, limiting oxygen upregulates the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) and promotes a metabolic shift towards glycolysis. Factor inhibiting HIF (FIH) is an asparaginyl hydroxylase that regulates HIF function by reducing its interaction with histone acetyl transferases. HIF levels are negatively regulated by the HIF prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs) which, like FIH, are 2-oxoglutarate (2OG) oxygenases.

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Introduction: KRAS is a critical oncogenic protein intricately involved in tumor progression, and the difficulty in targeting KRAS has led it to be classified as an 'undruggable target.' Among the various KRAS mutations, KRAS is highly prevalent and represents a promising therapeutic target, yet there are currently no approved inhibitors for it.

Area Covered: This review summarizes numerous patents and literature featuring inhibitors or degraders of KRAS through searching relevant information in PubMed, SciFinder and Web of Science databases from 2021 to February 2024, providing an overview of the research progress on inhibiting KRAS in terms of design strategies, chemical structures, biological activities, and clinical advancements.

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The neurodevelopmental disorder Pitt Hopkins syndrome (PTHS) causes clinical symptoms similar to Rett syndrome (RTT) patients. However, RTT is caused by MECP2 mutations whereas mutations in the TCF4 gene lead to PTHS. The mechanistic commonalities underling these two disorders are unknown, but their shared symptomology suggest that convergent pathway-level disruption likely exists.

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Introduction: Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) is a central regulatory factor in detecting and adapting to cellular oxygen stress. Dysregulation of HIF is associated with various human diseases. Seven HIF modulators, including six prolyl hydroxylase (PHD) inhibitors and one HIF-2α inhibitor, have already been approved for the treatment of renal anemia and cancer, respectively.

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Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate effect of liver Transplants (LT) with retrograde reperfusion on early postoperative recovery of liver function and its risk factors.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of clinical data from 136 liver transplantation (LT) patients at the 900th Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Joint Support Army, covering the period from January 2015 to January 2021. All participants provided informed consent, adhering to medical ethics guidelines.

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Online rumors are widespread and difficult to identify, which bring serious harm to society and individuals. To effectively detect and govern online rumors, it is necessary to conduct in-depth semantic analysis and understand the content features of rumors. This paper proposes a TFI domain ontology construction method, which aims to achieve semantic parsing and reasoning of the rumor text content.

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Objective: To observe the effect of acupuncture Zhibian (BL54) on the function of the bladder in controlling urine in women under ultrasound.

Method: 74 healthy subjects were randomly divided into deep acupuncture group of 37 cases and shallow acupuncture group of 37 cases. Under the guidance of ultrasound, the two groups of subjects were acupunctured at bilateral BL54.

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Osmotic energy from proton gradients in industrial acidic wastewater can be harvested and converted to electricity through membranes, making it a renewable and sustainable power source. However, the currently designed membranes for harvesting proton gradient energy in acidic wastewater cannot simultaneously achieve excellent chemical/mechanical stability and high power density under a large-scale area and require high cost and complex operations. Here, we demonstrate that commercial Nafion membranes with high chemical/mechanical stability and proton transport selectivity can generate a power density of 5.

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Rumor governance is an important guarantee for social stability and public safety. Based on the life cycle and crisis cycle model, this paper conducts a synergistic analysis of China's rumor governance policies and regulations and the core scientific research literature on rumor governance in WOS and CNKI. In this paper, we use the TF-IDF algorithm to count the word frequencies of 326 policy and regulation texts, the Jieba-RoBERTa-Kmeans model to cluster high-frequency keywords, and CiteSpace software and the LLR clustering algorithm are utilized to extract and cluster keywords from 391 documents in the WOS database and from 703 documents in the CNKI database.

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