Publications by authors named "Yangrong Zhang"

Article Synopsis
  • Timolol maleate (TM) is commonly used to treat glaucoma, but traditional eye drops don't work well due to the eye's barriers.
  • Researchers created a new formulation using nanoparticles (NPs) and an in situ gel (ISG) system to improve drug delivery and retention.
  • The new formulation showed excellent safety, longer duration in the eye, and effectively lowered intraocular pressure for up to 12 hours, providing insights for future glaucoma treatments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recently, various novel drug delivery systems have been developed to overcome ocular barriers in order to improve drug efficacy. We have previously reported that montmorillonite (MT) microspheres (MPs) and solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) loaded with the anti-glaucoma drug betaxolol hydrochloride (BHC) exhibited sustained drug release and thus intraocular pressure (IOP) lowering effects. Here, we investigated the effect of physicochemical particle parameters on the micro-interactions with tear film mucins and corneal epithelial cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The accumulation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) has been reported to be a major contributor to chronic systemic inflammation. AGEs are not efficiently removed by hemodialysis or the kidney of a chronic kidney disease (CKD) patient. The goal of this study was to develop a receptor for AGEs (RAGE)-based bioadsorbent device that was capable of removing endogenous AGEs from human blood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Kinesin-2 motors, which are involved in intraflagellar transport and cargo transport along cytoplasmic microtubules, differ from motors in the canonical kinesin-1 family by having a heterodimeric rather than homodimeric structure and possessing a three amino acid insertion in their neck linker domain. To determine how these structural features alter the chemomechanical coupling in kinesin-2, we used single-molecule bead experiments to measure the processivity and velocity of mouse kinesin-2 heterodimer (KIF3A/B) and the engineered homodimers KIF3A/A and KIF3B/B and compared their behavior to Drosophila kinesin-1 heavy chain (KHC). Single-motor run lengths of kinesin-2 were 4-fold shorter than those of kinesin-1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

KIF3A/B, a kinesin involved in intraflagellar transport and Golgi trafficking, is distinctive because it contains two nonidentical motor domains. Our hypothesis is that the two heads have distinct functional properties, which are tuned to maximize the performance of the wild-type heterodimer. To test this, we investigated the motility of wild-type KIF3A/B heterodimer and chimaeric KIF3A/A and KIF3B/B homodimers made by splicing the head of one subunit to the rod and tail of the other.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF