rAAV-mediated delivery of brain-derived neurotrophic factor promotes neurite outgrowth and protects neurodegeneration in focal ischemic model

Stroke is one of the neurological diseases which lead to permanently neuronal damage after temporary or long-term occlusion of vessels or after heart attack. However, there are few efficient strategies to prevent or treat this kind of insult in clinical because the consequence is irreversible and could be long-lasting after the onset of stroke. Gene therapy especially using viral system has long been addressed to be of great potential to reduce the damage. Here, we generated recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) carrying brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene. Cells infected with rAAV-BDNF could be able to produce functional BDNF which promoted neurite outgrowth and protected neurons from apoptosis induced by serum deprivation. Further more, single injection of rAAV showed neuroprotection against cell death in focal ischemic model. These results showed that rAAV-mediated gene delivery is functional, which shed light to the future application of viral system-based gene therapy in clinical

Dibenzothiophene Removal from Fuel Oil by Metal-Organic Frameworks: Performance and Kinetics

Desulfurization of organic sulfur in the fuel oil is essential to cut down the emission of sulfur dioxide, which is a major precursor of the acid rain and PM2.5. Currently, hydrodesulfurization is regarded as a state-of-art technology for the desulfurization of fuel oil. However, due to the stringent legislation of the fuel oil, the deep desulfurization technology is urgent to be developed. Adsorptive desulfurization method is promising due to the high selectivity and easy operation. The development of efficient adsorbent is important to advance this technology into industrial application. In this work, the five types of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), including Cu-BTC, UMCM-150, MIL-101(Cr), UIO-66, and Cu-ABTC were synthesized for the adsorption of dibenzothiophene (DBT), a typical organic sulfur compound in the fuel oil. The experimental results revealed that the adsorption capacity of the five MOFs followed the order of Cu-ABTC, UMCM-150, Cu-BTC, MIL-101(Cr), and UIO-66, which adsorption capacities were 46.2, 34.2, 28.3, 26.3, and 22.0 mgS/g, respectively. The three types of Cu-based MOFs such as Cu-ABTC, UMCM-150, and Cu-BTC outperformed the Cr-based MOFs, MIL-101, and Zr-based MOFs, UIO-66. Since the surface area and pore volumes of the Cu-based MOFs were not the greatest among the tested five MOFs, the physical properties of the MOFs were not the only limited factor for the DBT adsorption. The π-complexation between DBT and linkers/metal in the MOFs was also important. Kinetic analysis showed that the DBT adsorption onto the five tested MOFs follows the pseudo-second-order kinetics, confirming that the chemical π-complexation was also contributed to the DBT adsorption. Furthermore, the operation parameters such as oil-adsorbent ratio, initial sulfur concentration and adsorption temperature for the DBT adsorption onto Cu-ABTC were optimized to be 100:1 g/g, 1000 mgS/L and 30 °C, respectively. This work can provide some insights into the development of efficient adsorbent for the organic sulfur adsorption