Single-Walled Carbon Nanohorn (SWNH) Aggregates Inhibited Proliferation of Human Liver Cell Lines and Promoted Apoptosis, Especially for Hepatoma Cell Lines

Research focus: SWNHs (single-walled carbon nanohorns) may be utilized to treat cancer as drug carriers based on their particular structure. But, the effect mechanism of the material itself on liver cells has not been investigated. Research methods used: To answer those questions, the roles of rude SWNHs on the biology functions of human liver normal and cancer cells were studied. Results/findings of the research: The results indicated that SWNHs suppressed growth, proliferation, and mitotic entry of human liver normal and cancer cells, and also pushed cell apoptosis, especially in cancer cells. We had found SWNHs in the lysosomes of L02 cells and in the nuclei of HepG2 cells. It indicated that individual spherical SWNH particles could enter into liver cells. Main conclusions and recommendations: Our results identified that it had different mechanisms between SWNHs and hepatoma cell lines or human normal cell lines. Advanced research about application and mechanisms in the treatment of HCC (hepatocellular carcinoma) by SWNHs should be carried out

Bergenin suppresses the growth of colorectal cancer cells by inhibiting PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway

Purpose: To investigate anticancer effects of bergenin on human colorectal cancer cell lines.Methods: Human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line HCT116 was treated with various concentrations of bergenin for 24 and 48 h. Cell viability, apoptosis, cell cycle arrest and reactive oxygen species (ROS) level were analyzed by MTT, flow cytometry and fluorescent dye assays, respectively. DNA damage-associated protein expressions were analyzed by Western blotting.Results: Bergenin significantly suppressed the viability of HCT116 cells. Moreover, bergenin induced cells to accumulate in G1 phase and resulted in DNA breaks in HCT116 cells. It also led to marked accumulation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), a breaker of DNA strand in HCT116 cells. Interestingly, bergenin inhibited PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway.Conclusion: Bergenin effectively suppresses the growth of colorectal  adenocarcinoma by inducing generation of intracellular ROS, DNA damage and consequent G1 phase arrest via inhibition of PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway.Keywords: Bergenin, Colorectal cancer, DNA damage, Cell cycle arrest,  PI3K/AKT/mTO

Borophene-based materials for energy, sensors and information storage applications

Borophene, as a rising-star monoelemental two-dimensional (2D) material, has motivated great interest because of its novel properties, such as anisotropic plasmonics, high carrier mobility, mechanical compliance, optical transparency, ultrahigh thermal conductance, and superconductivity. These properties make it an ideal candidate for use in the field of energy, sensors, and information storage. Stimulated by the realization of pioneering experimental works in 2015 and the follow-up synthesis experiments, a series of high-performance borophene-based devices in the fields, including supercapacitors, batteries, hydroelectric generators, humidity sensors, gas sensors, pressure sensors, and memories, have been experimentally reported in recent years, which are beneficial to the transition of borophene-based materials from experimental synthesis to practical application. Therefore, in addition to paying attention to the experimental preparation of borophene, significant efforts are needed to promote the advancement of related applications of borophene. In this review, after providing a brief overview of borophene evolution and synthesis, we mainly summarize the applications of borophene-based materials in energy storage, energy conversion, energy harvesting, sensors, and information storage. Finally, based on the current research status, some rational suggestions and discussions on the issues and challenges in the future research direction are proposed

Apatinib has anti-tumor effects and induces autophagy in colon cancer cells

Objective(s): Apatinib recently has been used to treat patients with gastric cancer, but the function of apatinib in colon cancer remains unclear. This study was conducted to investigate the impacts of apatinib on the biological function and its potential mechanism of colon cancer cells in vitro. Materials and Methods:The effect of apatinib in colon cancer cells were detected by assessing cell viability, migration and invasion capabilities. Apoptosis cells and the cell cycle distribution of colon cancer cells were analyzed by flow cytometry. The potential mechanism was investigated via autophagy related proteins and pathways in vitro. Results: The proliferation, migration and invasion of colon cancer cells were inhibited when they were treated with different concentration of apatinib (20, 40 μM). When HCT116 and SW480 cells were treated with apatinib at the concentration of 20 μM, the apoptosis percentage were 3.7% and 5.8% respectively. As the drug concentration increased to 40μΜ, the the apoptosis percentage increased to 11.9% and 13.5%. Meanwhile, cell cycle was also altered. Furthermore, apatinib inhibited the expression of AKT-mTOR signaling pathway and increased the expression of LC3-Ⅱ. Conclusion: Apatinib can significantly inhibit the malignant phenotype of colon cancer cells, and it was involved in regulation of autophagy

A Bioinformatics Filtering Strategy for Identifying Radiation Response Biomarker Candidates

The number of biomarker candidates is often much larger than the number of clinical patient data points available, which motivates the use of a rational candidate variable filtering methodology. The goal of this paper is to apply such a bioinformatics filtering process to isolate a modest number (<10) of key interacting genes and their associated single nucleotide polymorphisms involved in radiation response, and to ultimately serve as a basis for using clinical datasets to identify new biomarkers. In step 1, we surveyed the literature on genetic and protein correlates to radiation response, in vivo or in vitro, across cellular, animal, and human studies. In step 2, we analyzed two publicly available microarray datasets and identified genes in which mRNA expression changed in response to radiation. Combining results from Step 1 and Step 2, we identified 20 genes that were common to all three sources. As a final step, a curated database of protein interactions was used to generate the most statistically reliable protein interaction network among any subset of the 20 genes resulting from Steps 1 and 2, resulting in identification of a small, tightly interacting network with 7 out of 20 input genes. We further ranked the genes in terms of likely importance, based on their location within the network using a graph-based scoring function. The resulting core interacting network provides an attractive set of genes likely to be important to radiation response

When Compressive Sensing Meets Data Hiding

We present a novel framework of performing multimedia data hiding using an over-complete dictionary, which brings compressive sensing to the application of data hiding. Unlike the conventional orthonormal full-space dictionary, the over-complete dictionary produces an underdetermined system with infinite transform results. We first discuss the minimum norm formulation (ℓ2-norm) which yields a closed-form solution and the concept of watermark projection, so that higher embedding capacity and an additional privacy preserving feature can be obtained. Furthermore, we study the sparse formulation (ℓ2-norm) and illustrate that as long as the ℓ0-norm of the sparse representation of the host signal is less than the signal's dimension in the original domain, an informed sparse domain data hiding system can be established by modifying the coefficients of the atoms that have not participated in representing the host signal. A single support modification-based data hiding system is then proposed and analyzed as an example. Several potential research directions are discussed for further studies. More generally, apart from the ℓ2- and ℓ0-norm constraints, other conditions for reliable detection performance are worth of future investigation.Accepted versio

Logarithmic laplacian prior based bayesian inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging

This paper presents a novel Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging (ISAR) algorithm based on a new sparse prior, known as the logarithmic Laplacian prior. The newly proposed logarithmic Laplacian prior has a narrower main lobe with higher tail values than the Laplacian prior, which helps to achieve performance improvement on sparse representation. The logarithmic Laplacian prior is used for ISAR imaging within the Bayesian framework to achieve better focused radar image. In the proposed method of ISAR imaging, the phase errors are jointly estimated based on the minimum entropy criterion to accomplish autofocusing. The maximum a posterior (MAP) estimation and the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) are utilized to estimate the model parameters to avoid manually tuning process. Additionally, the fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Hadamard product are used to minimize the required computational efficiency. Experimental results based on both simulated and measured data validate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the traditional sparse ISAR imaging algorithms in terms of resolution improvement and noise suppression.Published versio