Gold nanorods coated with self-assembled silk fibroin for improving their biocompatibility and facilitating targeted photothermal-photodynamic cancer therapy.

Gold nanorods (AuNRs) have shown great potential as photothermal agents for cancer therapy. However, the biosafety of AuNRs ordinarily synthesized using a cationic ligand assistance procedure has always been a subject of controversy, which limits their application in tumor therapy. In this study, we propose a novel strategy to enhance the biocompatibility of AuNRs by constructing a biological coating derived from silk fibroin (SF) on their surface.

Design, Synthesis, and Biological Evaluation of 2-Arylaminopyrimidine Derivatives as Dual Cathepsin L and JAK Inhibitors for the Treatment of Acute Lung Injury.

Acute lung injury (ALI) is a disease characterized by pulmonary inflammation, blood barrier functional disorder, and hypoxemia. Herein, a series of 2-aminopyrimidine derivatives were synthesized. Most of them exhibited inhibitory effects on inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and IL-8 in human bronchial epithelial (HBE) cells at a concentration of 5 μM without significant cytotoxicity.

Aquatic life criteria & human health ambient water quality criteria derivations and probabilistic risk assessments of 7 benzenes in China.

The benzenes have attracted worldwide attention due to their high biological toxicity in the environment. In this study, using species sensitivity distribution method to derive the aquatic life criteria of 7 benzenes (carbazole, 1,3-Dichlorobenzene, 1,4-Dichlorobenzene, 1,2,4-Trichlorobenzene, phenol, 2,4-Dichlorophenol and nitrobenzene), then risk quotient method (RQ), potentially affected fraction (PAF) method and joint probability curve (JPC) method were applied for multilevel ecological risk assessment for 7 benzenes in Tai Lake Basin. In addition, the human health ambient water quality criteria (AWQC) of 7 benzenes were derived according to USEPA guidelines, and the probability distributions of human health AWQC for 7 benzenes in China were simulated by Monte Carlo simulation combined with crystal ball software.

Inventing a facile method to construct () silk fibroin nanocapsules for drug delivery.

() silk fibroin (SF) microcapsules have acted as a great candidate in delivering drugs. However, it is difficult to fabricate SF nanocapsules using the present layer-by-layer (LBL) technique. In addition, the current SF microcapsules have limits in loading negatively charged drugs.