Publications by authors named "Zhihao Hu"

Article Synopsis
  • The probiotic E. coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) was studied for its effects on atherosclerosis in mice fed a high-fat diet, revealing its potential to alleviate disease progression.
  • EcN treatment reduced atherosclerotic plaque formation, improved cholesterol levels, and inhibited the expression of pyroptosis-related proteins linked to inflammation.
  • Further analysis showed that EcN regulated gut microbiota and metabolite levels, suggesting a mechanism for its beneficial effects, although antibiotics partially reversed these outcomes.
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Fear overgeneralization is widely considered to be a core feature of pathological anxiety, and the excessive spread of fear can be a great burden on patients. Although perceptual processing is a basic process of human cognition, the impact of visual perception recognition on fear generalization has not yet been fully explored. In this study, 69 subjects were recruited to explore the effects of the hierarchical features of stimuli on fear generalization and examine the roles of trait anxiety (TA) and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) in this process.

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Overexpression of coactivator associated arginine methyltransferase 1 (CARM1) is associated with various diseases including cancer. Therefore, CARM1 has emerged as an attractive therapeutic target and a drug response biomarker for anticancer drug discovery. However, the development of conventional CARM1 inhibitors has been hampered by their limited clinical efficacy, acquired resistance, and inability to inhibit nonenzymatic functions of CARM1.

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  • Microplastics (MPs) are commonly found in everyday products and are significantly transported to natural water bodies via wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), making their distribution and removal crucial to understand.
  • Main sources of MPs in WWTPs include personal care products, textile industries, and road tire abrasion, with MPs often appearing as fibers and fragments in sizes ranging from less than 0.5 mm to 5 mm.
  • During WWTP processes, primary treatment stages remove about 56.8-88.4% of MPs, while secondary treatment efficiency varies widely (42.1-99.2%), and novel technologies like membrane separation and photocatalysis offer improved removal methods to protect natural water bodies.
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  • * A clinical trial involving 130 patients with chronic kidney disease stages 3-4 assessed the effectiveness of health education interventions on patient health literacy and renal function over 12 months.
  • * While overall health information literacy and certain renal function measures showed no significant differences between intervention and control groups, patients receiving health coaching demonstrated notable improvements in self-management behaviors and hemoglobin levels, highlighting the role of education in patient outcomes.
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Prostate cancer rarely responds to immune-checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapies. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF) are critical components of the immunologically "cold" tumor microenvironment and are considered a promising target to enhance the immunotherapy response. In this study, we aimed to reveal the mechanisms regulating CAF plasticity to identify potential strategies to switch CAFs from protumorigenic to antitumor phenotypes and to enhance ICB efficacy in prostate cancer.

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Immunotherapy has revolutionized the treatment of tumors, but there are still a large number of patients who do not benefit from immunotherapy. Pericytes play an important role in remodeling the immune microenvironment. However, how pericytes affect the prognosis and treatment resistance of tumors is still unknown.

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Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a hot tumor infiltrated by large numbers of CD8 T cells and is highly sensitive to immunotherapy. However, tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), mainly M2 macrophages, tend to undermine the efficacy of immunotherapy and promote the progression of RCC. Here, macrophage-derived nanosponges are fabricated by M2 macrophage membrane-coated poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)(PLGA), which could chemotaxis to the CXC and CC chemokine subfamily-enriched RCC microenvironment via corresponding membrane chemokine receptors.

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Background: The pea leafminer, Liriomyza huidobrensis, is one of the most important insect pests on vegetables and ornamentals. The survival and egg-laying behavior of leafminers are markedly affected by the environment temperature. However, the mechanisms underlying the relationship between egg-laying and temperature are still largely unknown.

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Epigenetic pathways play a critical role in the initiation, progression, and metastasis of cancer. Over the past few decades, significant progress has been made in the development of targeted epigenetic modulators ( inhibitors). However, epigenetic inhibitors have faced multiple challenges, including limited clinical efficacy, toxicities, lack of subtype selectivity, and drug resistance.

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Porous electrodes with high specific surface areas have been commonly employed for alkaline water electrolysis. The gas bubbles generated in electrodes due to water electrolysis, however, can screen the reaction sites and hinder reactant transport, thereby deteriorating the performance of electrodes. Hence, an in-depth understanding of the behavior of bubbles in porous electrodes is of great importance.

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Phase engineering synthesis strategy is extremely challenging to achieve stable metallic phase molybdenum diselenide for a better physicochemical property than the thermodynamically stable semiconducting phase. Herein, we introduce tungsten atom clusters into the MoSe layered structure, realizing the phase transition from the 2H semiconductor to 1T metallic phase at a high temperature. The combination of synchrotron radiation X-ray absorption spectroscopy, Cs-corrected transmission electron microscopy, and theoretical calculation demonstrates that the aggregation doping of W atoms is the factor of MoSe structure transformation.

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  • Histone methyltransferases (HMTs) are important in regulating gene activity and are associated with various diseases, particularly cancer, making them potential targets for cancer therapy.
  • Despite interest in developing HMT inhibitors over the last decade, challenges like limited effectiveness, moderate selectivity, and risk of drug resistance have slowed progress.
  • The review highlights key HMTs, their functions in cancer, and recent advancements in HMT modulator development, while also addressing ongoing challenges and future research directions in HMT-targeted cancer treatments.
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Multi-shell transition metal oxide hollow spheres show great potential for applications in energy storage because of their unique multilayered hollow structure with large specific surface area, short electron and charge transport paths, and structural stability. In this paper, the controlled synthesis of NiCoO, MnCoO, NiMnOmulti-shell layer structures was achieved by using the solvothermal method. As the anode materials for Li-ion batteries, the three multi-shell structures maintained good stability after 650 long cycles in the cyclic charge/discharge test.

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Objective: To investigate short-term efficacy of direct laparoscopic-assisted radical gastrectomy (LAG) versus non-curative endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) plus additional LAG for early gastric cancer.

Materials And Methods: 286 patients were retrospectively assigned into two groups: direct LAG group (n = 255) and additional LAG (ESD plus LAG, n = 31) group. A 1:2 propensity score matching was performed to equalize relevant confounding factors between two groups for analysis.

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Biomimetic nano-platforms have attracted extensive attention due to their good biocompatibility, low immunogenicity, and homologous targeting to lesions. In this study, glioma cell membranes are used to encapsulate indocyanine green (ICG) loaded nanoparticles (SLNP/ICG), termed as SLNP/ICG@M for targeted photodynamic therapy (PDT) against glioma. Cell membrane modification significantly enhances cellular uptake of SLNP/ICG@M in homologous glioma cells in vitro and tumor distribution in vivo.

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The practical and facile Mn(OAc)-promoted [3+2] cycloaddition reaction of enaminones with isocyanoacetate was developed, that delivered a diversity of 3-aroyl pyrrole-2-carboxylic esters with broad substrates scope. The most of the newly synthesized compounds exhibit moderate antiproliferative activity against four cancer cells. Notably, compound 2n demonstrate the most potent activity with average IC values of 5.

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The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is an essential component in regulating and maintaining the homeostatic microenvironment of the central nervous system (CNS). During the occurrence and development of glioblastoma (GBM), BBB is pathologically destroyed with a marked increase in permeability. Due to the obstruction of the BBB, current strategies for GBM therapeutics still obtain a meager success rate and may lead to systemic toxicity.

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Soil particle sizes and mineral phases play a major role in the migration of arsenic (As) in mine. In this study, soil As fractionation and mineralogical composition in different particle sizes soil at naturally mineralized and anthropogenically disturbed zones from an abandoned mine were comprehensively studied. The results showed that soil As contents in anthropogenically disturbed mining zone (MZ), processing zone (PZ), and smelting zone (SZ) were increased with decreasing of soil particle sizes.

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The regional distribution of neurofibrillary tangles of hyperphosphorylated tau aggregates is associated with the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Misfolded proteopathic tau recruits naïve tau and templates its misfolding and aggregation in a prion-like fashion, which is believed to be the molecular basis of propagation of tau pathology. A practical way to assess tau seeding activity is to measure its ability to recruit/bind other tau molecules and to induce tau aggregation.

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To investigate the efficacy and safety of combined thoracoscopic and laparoscopic radical resection of esophagogastric junction cancers using a natural orifice specimen extraction-like approach for extraction of large surgical specimens. Patients who had esophagogastric junction cancers treated with thoracolaparoscopic resection using the natural orifice specimen extraction-like approach for specimen extraction were retrospectively enrolled. A 5-cm transverse incision on the abdominal wall at the middle of the superior pubic symphysis was made for surgical specimen extraction.

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Hydrogen sulfide (HS) emission from industrial fields and bacteria decomposing of sulfur-containing organic matter poses a significant impact on human health and atmospheric environment, thus necessitating the development of a HS sensor with high sensitivity and exclusive selectivity especially at a very low dose. Chemiresistive sensors based on traditional metal oxides were readily limited by the elevated operating temperature and severe cross-sensitivity. To overcome these obstacles, we prepared two dimensional (2D) tin oxide (SnO) nanosheets decorated with thin black phosphorus (BP) as the sensing layer of MEMS HS sensors.

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Metal smelting have brought severe metal(loid)s contamination to the soil. Spatial distribution and pollution source analysis for soil metal(loid)s in an abandoned lead/zinc smelter were studied. The results showed that soil was contaminated heavily with metal(loid)s.

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We develop a methodology for comparing agent-based models that are developed for the same domain, but may differ in the data sets (e.g., geographical regions) to which they are applied, and in the structure of the model.

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Surgery is the only curative approach for resectable esophageal cancer. This retrospective study was to investigate the immediate effect and operative complications of conventional and modified thoracolaparoscopic esophagectomy with a cervical or abdominal incision to extract specimen for the treatment of patients with esophageal cancer. Eighty-one patients were enrolled, among which 55 patients underwent conventional McKeown thoracolaparoscopic esophagectomy (conventional MTE) and 26 patients underwent modified MTE with a cerivical incision (modified MTE).

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