Publications by authors named "Zexin Liu"

Two-dimensional graphene has emerged as a promising competitor to silicon in the post-Moore era due to its superior electrical, optical, and thermal properties. However, graphene undergoes a strong degradation in its in-plane thermal conductivity when it is coupled to an amorphous substrate. Meanwhile, the weak van der Waals interaction between graphene and the dielectric substrate leads to high interfacial thermal resistance.

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Living tissues span a remarkable spectrum of modulus ranging from the level of Pa to GPa in a water-rich environment. Constructing soft and hard materials that match the mechanics of tissues and researching mechanical transition in water, are beneficial for their biological applications. Here, using polyelectrolyte complex fiber as a model system and reinforcing the fiber by stepwisely introducing additional coordination and covalent bonds, this investigated that the water effect on mechanical transition behaviors.

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Transition metal dichalcogenides like MoS have been considered as crucial channel materials beyond silicon to continuously advance transistor scaling down owing to their two-dimensional structure and exceptional electrical properties. However, the undesirable interface morphology and vibrational phonon frequency mismatch between MoS and the dielectric layer induce low thermal boundary conductance, resulting in overheating issues and impeding electrical performance improvement in the MoS field-effect transistors. Here, we employed hybrid high- dielectric layers of AlO/HfO to simultaneously reduce the interfacial thermal resistance and improve device electrical performance.

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African swine fever (ASF) represents one of the most economically important viral infectious diseases in the swine industry worldwide. Presently, there is an absence of commercially available therapeutic drugs and safe vaccines. Cepharanthine (CEP), one of the naturally occurring bisbenzylisoquinoline alkaloids, has been approved as a drug to treat various diseases such as leukopenia, bronchial asthma, and snake bites for 70 years in Japan.

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Due to its excellent thermal conductivity, graphene can have great potential in the thermal conductivity of rubber composites. However, the interfacial thermal resistance between graphene and rubber severely hinders this application. In this work, molecular dynamics methods were used to study the interfacial thermal transport of carboxylated, aminated, hydroxylated, and oxy-bridged graphene in rubber composites.

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African swine fever (ASF), caused by ASF virus (ASFV), represents one of the most economically important viral infectious diseases in swine industry worldwide. So far there is no vaccine or antiviral drug for controlling ASF pandemics. In the present study, we assessed inhibition of six nucleoside analogues against ASFV replication in ex vivo primary porcine alveolar macrophages (PAMs), including the first approved antiviral drug idoxuridine.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers are exploring flexible electronics to enhance integration, miniaturization, and multifunctionality, which can increase power density but face challenges with heat dissipation due to low thermal conductivity of substrates.
  • A new method using template-assisted chemical conversion creates boron nitride nanotube (BNNT) films that are highly conductive and flexible, utilizing aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) templates for structure.
  • The resulting BNNT film achieves impressive thermal conductivity at 45.5 W m K, superior heat dissipation compared to traditional materials, and shows promise for cooling applications in flexible electronics.
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Article Synopsis
  • Current immunocytokine treatments face challenges due to toxicities from high doses; a new approach using LH05 aims to solve this issue.
  • LH05 is a prodrug that masks IL-15 to reduce systemic toxic effects and releases an active form of IL-15 specifically in the tumor environment, enhancing its antitumor properties.
  • The effectiveness of LH05 relies on boosting CD8 T and natural killer cell infiltration, helping to transform less responsive "cold" tumors into more aggressive "hot" tumors, and it may work well alongside other therapies for advanced cancer.
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The continued miniaturization of chips demands highly thermally conductive materials and effective thermal management strategies. Particularly, the high-field transport of the devices built with 2D materials is limited by self-heating. Here a systematic control of heat flow in single-side fluorinated graphene (FG) with varying degrees of fluorination is reported, revealing a superior room-temperature thermal conductivity as high as 128 W m K.

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Central to the clinical adoption of patient-specific modeling strategies is demonstrating that simulation results are reliable and safe. Indeed, simulation frameworks must be robust to uncertainty in model input(s), and levels of confidence should accompany results. In this study, we applied a coupled uncertainty quantification-finite element (FE) framework to understand the impact of uncertainty in vascular material properties on variability in predicted stresses.

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Central to the clinical adoption of patient-specific modeling strategies is demonstrating that simulation results are reliable and safe. Indeed, simulation frameworks must be robust to uncertainty in model input(s), and levels of confidence should accompany results. In this study, we applied a coupled uncertainty quantification-finite element (FE) framework to understand the impact of uncertainty in vascular material properties on variability in predicted stresses.

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The ligament, which connects bones at the joints, has both high water content and excellent mechanical properties in living organisms. However, it is still challenging to fabricate fibrous materials that possess high water content and ligament-like mechanical characteristics simultaneously. Herein, the design and preparation of a ligament-mimicking multicomponent fiber is reported through stepwise assembly of polysaccharide, calcium, and dopamine.

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Red blood cell distribution width (RDW) to human serum albumin (ALB) ratio (RDW/ALB Ratio, RAR) is a prognostic factor for adverse outcomes in different disease populations. However, the relationship between RAR and pulmonary embolism outcomes remains unclear. Therefore, this study set out to investigate the association between RAR and the risk of all-cause death in acute pulmonary embolism (APE) patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).

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The rapid growth in the portion of the aging population has led to a consequent increase in demand for biomedical hydrogels, together with an assortment of challenges that need to be overcome in this field. Smart hydrogels can autonomously sense and respond to the physiological/pathological changes of the tissue microenvironment and continuously adapt the response according to the dynamic spatiotemporal shifts in conditions. This along with other favorable properties, make smart hydrogels excellent materials for employing toward improving the precision of treatment for age-related diseases.

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The subchondral bone is an important part of cartilage which contains a large amount of hydroxyapatite. The mineral components of subchondral bone is the key factor which determines the biomechanical strength, and then affects the biological function of articular cartilage. Here, a mineralized polyacrylamide (PAM-Mineralized) hydrogel with good ALP activity, cell adhesion and biocompatibility was fabricated for subchondral bone tissue engineering.

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Two-dimensional (2D) nanosheets have been assembled into various macroscopic structures for wide engineering applications. To fully explore their exceptional thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties, 2D nanosheets must be aligned into highly ordered structures due to their strong structural anisotropy. Structures stacked layer by layer such as films and fibers have been readily assembled from 2D nanosheets due to their planar geometry.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study focuses on developing new thermal interface materials (TIMs) that are thermally conductive and electrically insulating, which are crucial for effective electronic cooling.
  • - Vertically aligned boron nitride nanosheet films (VBNFs) are created using advanced methods and demonstrated to offer excellent thermal conductivity and low modulus at a low filler concentration, enhancing their performance.
  • - These TIMs also meet the electrical insulation requirements, making them ideal for cooling high-power LEDs by providing efficient heat dissipation.
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Developing universal CARs with improved flexible targeting and controllable activities is urgently needed. While several studies have suggested the potential of CD16a in tandem with monoclonal antibodies to construct universal CAR-T cells, the weak affinity between them is one of the limiting factors for efficacy. Herein, we systematically investigated the impact of Fc receptor (FcR) affinity on CAR-T cells properties by constructing universal CARs using Fc receptors with different affinities for IgG1 antibodies, namely CD16a, CD32a, and CD64.

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Being an important immune stimulant of T lymphocytes and NK cells, the recombinant human interleukin-15 (rhIL-15) has been extensively researched in tumor immunotherapy or as a vaccine adjuvant. However, the rhIL-15 manufacturing level lags far behind its growing clinical demand due to the lack of efficient and exact analysis methodologies to characterize the trace by-products, typically redox and deamidation. In order to improve the production and quality control of rhIL-15, here we developed an expanded resolution reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (ExRP-HPLC) approach to quickly and accurately analyze the oxidation and reduction by-products of rhIL-15, which may appear during the purification processes.

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Polymer complex fibers (PCFs) are a novel kind of fiber material processed from polymer complexes that are assembled through noncovalent interactions. These can realize the synergy of functional components and miscibility on the molecular level. The dynamic character of noncovalent interactions endows PCFs with remarkable properties, such as reversibility, stimuli responsiveness, self-healing, and recyclability, enabling them to be applied in multidisciplinary fields.

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Ferroptosis is a newfound mode of regulated cell death that may have potential to associate with prognostic or diagnostic factors in glioma. In this research, 5 genes related to glioma were screened through the FerrDb database, and we analyzed the combination between genes and glioma of survival and prognosis via TCGA, GEPIA, TIMER, and other databases. Survival curve and prognostic analysis showed that the overexpression of NFE2L2 and NOX4, respectively, has a remarkable link with a worse prognosis in glioma.

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Background: Computational biomedical simulations frequently contain parameters that model physical features, material coefficients, and physiological effects, whose values are typically assumed known a priori. Understanding the effect of variability in those assumed values is currently a topic of great interest. A general-purpose software tool that quantifies how variation in these parameters affects model outputs is not broadly available in biomedicine.

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Interleukin-15 (IL-15) is a promising candidate for cancer immunotherapy due to its potent immune-activating effects. There are several IL-15 molecules currently in clinical trials but facing shortages of poor half-life, circulation instability, or complicated production and quality control processes. The aim of this study is to design a novel IL-15 superagonist to set out the above difficulties, and we constructed F4RLI consisting of the GS-linker spaced IgG4 Fc fragment, soluble IL-15 Rα (sIL-15Rα), and IL-15(N72D).

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African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a highly infectious and lethal swine pathogen that causes severe socio-economic consequences in affected countries. Unfortunately, effective vaccine for combating ASF is unavailable so far, and the prevention and control strategies for ASFV are still very limited. Toosendanin (TSN), a triterpenoid saponin extracted from the medicinal herb Sieb.

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Despite the demonstrated immense potential of immune checkpoint inhibitors in various types of cancers, only a minority of patients respond to these therapies. Immunocytokines designed to deliver an immune-activating cytokine directly to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) and block the immune checkpoint simultaneously may provide a strategic advantage over the combination of two single agents. To increase the response rate to checkpoint blockade, in this study, we developed a novel immunocytokine (LH01) composed of the antibody against programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) fused to interleukin (IL)-15 receptor alpha-sushi domain/IL-15 complex.

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