Activated monocytes in peritumoral stroma of hepatocellular carcinoma foster immune privilege and disease progression through PD-L1

Macrophages (Mφ) are prominent components of solid tumors and exhibit distinct phenotypes in different microenvironments. We have recently found that tumors can alter the normal developmental process of Mφ to trigger transient activation of monocytes in peritumoral stroma. We showed that a fraction of monocytes/Mφ in peritumoral stroma, but not in cancer nests, expresses surface PD-L1 (also termed B7-H1) molecules in tumors from patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Monocytes activated by tumors strongly express PD-L1 proteins with kinetics similar to their activation status, and significant correlations were found between the levels of PD-L1+ and HLA-DRhigh on tumor-infiltrating monocytes. Autocrine tumor necrosis factor α and interleukin 10 released from activated monocytes stimulated monocyte expression of PD-L1. The PD-L1+ monocytes effectively suppressed tumor-specific T cell immunity and contributed to the growth of human tumors in vivo; the effect could be reversed by blocking PD-L1 on those monocytes. Moreover, we found that PD-L1 expression on tumor-infiltrating monocytes increased with disease progression, and the intensity of the protein was associated with high mortality and reduced survival in the HCC patients. Thus, expression of PD-L1 on activated monocytes/Mφ may represent a novel mechanism that links the proinflammatory response to immune tolerance in the tumor milieu

Preparation and Evaluation of Coal Fly Ash/Chitosan Composites as Magnetic Supports for Highly Efficient Cellulase Immobilization and Cellulose Bioconversion

Two magnetic supports with different morphologies and particle sizes were designed and prepared for cellulase immobilization based on chitosan and industrial by-product magnetic coal fly ash (MCFA). One was prepared by coating chitosan onto spherical MCFA particles to form non-porous MCFA@chitosan gel microcomposites (Support I) with a size of several micrometers, and the other was prepared using the suspension method to form porous MCFA/chitosan gel beads (Support II) with a size of several hundred micrometers. Cellulase was covalent binding to the support by glutaraldehyde activation method. The morphology, structure and magnetic property of immobilized cellulase were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and a vibrating-sample magnetometer. The cellulase loading on Support I was 85.8 mg/g with a relatlvely high activity recovery of 76.6%, but the immobilized cellulase exhibited low thermal stability. The cellulase loading on Support II was 76.8 mg/g with a relative low activity recovery of 51.9%, but the immobilized cellulase showed high thermal stability. Cellulase immobilized on Support I had a glucose productivity of 219.8 mg glucose/g CMC and remained 69.9% of the original after 10 cycles; whereas the glucose productivity was 246.4 mg glucose/g CMC and kept 75.5% of its initial value after 10 repeated uses for Support II immobilized cellulase. The results indicate that the two supports can be used as cheap and effective supports to immobilize enzymes

Theoretical prediction of the linear isomers for rare gas-carbon disulfide complexes : He-CS2, Ne-CS2, and Ar-CS2

Theoretical studies of the potential energy surfaces (PESs) and bound states are performed for rare gas-carbon disulfide complexes, He-CS2, Ne-CS2, and Ar-CS2. Three two-dimensional intermolecular PESs are constructed from ab initio data points which are calculated at the CCSD(T) level with aug-cc-pVTZ basis set supplemented with bond functions. We find that the three PESs have very similar features and each PES can be characterized by a global T-shaped minimum, two equivalent local linear minima, and the saddle points between them. The T-shaped isomer is energetically more stable than the linear isomer for each complex. The linear isomers, which have not been observed in experiment so far, are predicted from our PESs and further identified by bound state calculations. Moreover, we assign several intermolecular vibrational states for both the T-shaped and linear isomers of the three complexes via the analysis of wavefunctions. The corresponding vibrational frequencies are calculated from the bound state energies for these assigned states. These frequencies could be helpful for further experimental studies, especially for the linear isomers. We also calculate the rovibrational transition frequencies for the three T-shaped isomers and the pure rotational transition frequencies for the linear isomers, respectively. The accuracy of the PESs is validated by the good agreement between theoretical and experimental results for the rovibrational transition frequencies and spectroscopic parameters.Published versio

In Situ Synthesis of Poly(methyl methacrylate)/SiO2 Hybrid Nanocomposites via “Grafting Onto” Strategy Based on UV Irradiation in the Presence of Iron Aqueous Solution

Poly(methyl methacrylate)/SiO2 (PMMA/SiO2) hybrid composites were prepared via “grafting onto” strategy based on UV irradiation in the presence of iron aqueous solution. Two steps were used to graft polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) onto the surface of nanosilica, anchoring 3-(methacryloxy) propyl trimethoxysilane (MPTS) onto the surface of nanosilica to modify it with double bonds, and then grafting PMMA onto the surface of nanosilica with FeCl3 as photoinitiator. The products were characterized by FT-IR, TGA, TEM, DLS, and XPS. The results showed that it is easy to graft PMMA onto the surface of nanosilica under UV irradiation, and the hybrid particles are monodisperse and have core-shell structure with nanosilica as the core and PMMA layers as the shell. Furthermore, the products initiated by FeCl3 have higher monomer conversion, percent grafting, and better monodispersion compared with the products initiated by traditional photoinitiator such as 2-hydroxy-4-(2-hydroxyethoxy)-2-methyl-propiophenone (Irgacure 2959)

Thermal Welding by the Third Phase Between Polymers: A Review for Ultrasonic Weld Technology Developments

Ultrasonic welding (USW) is a promising method for the welds between dissimilar materials. Ultrasonic thermal welding by the third phase (TWTP) method was proposed in combination with the formation of a third phase, which was confirmed as an effective technology for polymer welding between the two dissimilar materials compared with the traditional USW. This review focused on the advances of applying the ultrasonic TWTP for thermoplastic materials. The research development on the ultrasonic TWTP of polycarbonate (PC) and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), polylactic acid (PLA) and polyformaldehyde (POM), and PLA and PMMA are summarized according to the preparation of the third phase, welded strength, morphologies of rupture surfaces, thermal stability, and others. The review aimed at providing guidance for using ultrasonic TWTP in polymers and a basic understanding of the welding mechanism, i.e., interdiffusion and molecular motion mechanisms between the phases

A Hybrid Rule-Based and Data-Driven Approach to Illegal Transshipment Identification with Interpretable Behavior Features

Illegal transshipment of maritime ships is usually closely related to illegal activities such as smuggling, human trafficking, piracy plunder, and illegal fishing. Intelligent identification of illegal transshipment has become an important technical means to ensure the safety of maritime transport. However, due to different geographical environments, legal policies and regulatory requirements in each sea area, there are differences in the movement characteristics and geographical distribution of illegal transshipment behavior in different time and space. Moreover, in areas with dense traffic flow, normal navigation behavior can easily be identified as illegal transshipment, resulting in a high rate of misidentification. This paper proposes a hybrid rule-based and data-driven approach to solve the problem of missing identification in fixed threshold methods and introduces a traffic density feature to reduce the misidentification rate in dense traffic areas. The method is both interpretable and adaptable through unsupervised clustering to get suitable threshold distribution combination for regulatory sea areas. The evaluation results in two different sea areas show that the proposed method is applicable. Compared with other widely used identification methods, this method identifies more illegal transshipment events, which are highly suspicious, and gives warning much earlier. The proposed method can even filter out misidentification events from compared methods’ results, which account for more than half of the total number

Preparation of Polyaniline/Emulsion Microsphere Composite for Efficient Adsorption of Organic Dyes

Surface-functionalized polymeric microspheres have wide applications in various areas. Herein, monodisperse poly(styrene–methyl methacrylate–acrylic acid) (PSMA) microspheres were prepared via emulsion polymerization. Polyaniline (PANI) was then coated on the PSMA surface via in situ polymerization, and a three-dimensional (3D) structured reticulate PANI/PSMA composite was, thus, obtained. The adsorption performance of the composite for organic dyes under different circumstances and the adsorption mechanism were studied. The obtained PANI/PSMA composite exhibited a high adsorption rate and adsorption capacity, as well as good adsorption selectivity toward methyl orange (MO). The adsorption process followed pseudo-second-order kinetics and the Langmuir isotherm. The maximum adsorption capacity for MO was 147.93 mg/g. After five cycles of adsorption–desorption, the removal rate remained higher than 90%, which indicated that the adsorbent has great recyclability. The adsorbent materials presented herein would be highly valuable for the removal of organic dyes from wastewater

Regulatory role of ceRNA network in B lymphocytes of patients with immune thrombocytopenia

AbstractObjective High-throughput sequencing was used to screen expressing differences of miRNA, lncRNA, and mRNA in CD19+ B peripheral blood samples of newly diagnosed immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) patients and healthy controls. The study aimed to explore the regulatory role of ceRNA network in the pathogenesis of dysfunctional CD19 + B lymphocytes of ITP patients.Methods CD19+ B lymphocytes were isolated from peripheral blood samples of ITP patients and their healthy counterparts. High-throughput sequencing was used to screen for the expression of miRNA, lncRNA, and mRNA of ITP patients and healthy controls, which were analysed by the ceRNA network. Moreover, qPCR was used to verify the differential expression of miRNA, lncRNA, and mRNA in ITP patients and healthy controls. The correlation between differentially expressed miRNA, lncRNA, mRNA, and B lymphocyte subsets was also analysed.Results The CD19+ B lymphocytes of 4 newly diagnosed ITP patients and 4 healthy controls were sequenced and analysed. There were 65 differentially expressed lncRNA and 149 mRNA forming a ceRNA network showed that 12 lncRNA and 136 differentially expressed mRNA were closely associated. Similarly, miR-144-3p, miR-374c-3p, and miR-451a were highly expressed in ITP patients, as confirmed by qPCR, which was consistent with the high-throughput sequence results. LOC102724852 and CCL20 were highly expressed in ITP patients, while LOC105378901, LOC112268311, ALAS2, and TBC1D3F were not as compared to healthy controls, which was consistent with the high-throughput sequence results. In addition, the expression of miR-374c-3p, LOC112268311, LOC105378901, and CXCL3 were correlated with the percentage of B lymphocyte subsets.Conclusions The ceRNA network of miRNA, lncRNA, and mRNA in peripheral CD19 + B lymphocytes plays an essential role in the pathogenesis of ITP

Pressing Induced Caking: A General Strategy to Scale-Span Molecular Self-Assembled Materials

We report that under mechanical pressure, caking of the precipitated molecular self-assemblies may lead to bulk supramolecular films. Massive fabrication of supramolecular films becomes possible using a simple household noodle machine. The film can be endowed diversified functions by depositing various functional ingredients via co-precipitation