Two New Steroidal Glycosides from Ophiopogon japonicus

The tuber of Ophiopogon japonicus Ker-Gawl. is recorded to have various functions, such as against cardiovascular diseases and anti-bacteria, and used as a potent drug to treat different diseases, especially heart diseases1. Since the first steriodal glycoside was isolated from the plant by Japanese scholars2, much attention has been paid to the studies of the chemical components of O. japonicus in recent decades. Steroidal glycosides as the major glycosides with the aglycones of ruscogenin …     

Pulse radiolysis study on the free radical scavenging activities of puerarin

Free radical theory of biology and medicine suggests that free radicals are involved in the happening of many chronic diseases including cancers and cardiovascular diseases, and natural antioxidants play positive effect in the prevention of such diseases[1]. This theory leads to much interest in the free radical scavenging activities of the pharmacologically active components in herbal medicines. Puerarin (fig. 1), a compound of isoflavone, is isolated from Chinese herbal medicine radix puera…     

Prediction on amphiphilicity of hypocrellin derivatives

Hypocrellins are most suitable for photodynamic therapy (PDT) of the diseases occurring in the superficial layer, such as microvascular diseases, because of their special absorption spectral properties. However, hypocrellins and most of their derivatives are basically lipophilic, while the hydrophilic derivatives lose the PDT activity in vivo. Therefore, the key problem for practical application of PDT of microvascular diseases focuses on finding the derivatives which possess optimized amphiphilicity. Herein, we developed a theoretical method to estimate the amphi-philicity of a molecule by the calculated average polarity. Compared with the experimentally measured results, the method is proved to be applicable. Based on the computation and available experimental results, it can be concluded that the derivative must have the polarities around C.22 for optimized amphiphilicity.     

ROCK inhibitor: Focus on recent updates

Rho-associated coiled-coil-containing protein kinase(ROCK) belongs to the serine-threonine family, and ROCK is involved in a variety of biological processes including cell migration, adhesion, proliferation and differentiation through phosphorylation of different downstream substrates. The aberrant activation of ROCK is associated with the pathological conditions in different systems including various diseases, including cancer, neurological diseases, inflammation, cardiovascular diseases and gl...     

The application of CRISPR-Cas in disease diagnosis and treatment

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat(CRISPR) has been gaining much attention in the modern medical field and has been widely used for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases in recent years. In this review, we will introduce the application of CRISPR in disease diagnosis and treatment, including its use in detecting pathogens, gene mutations, and genetic diseases, as well as its application in gene therapy for single-gene diseases, cancer, viral infectious diseases, and cardi...     

Synthesis of Novel Fluorescence reagents and Their Application in Determination of Thiol Compounds

The identification and determination of thiol compounds is essential both for the clinical diagnosis and the con trol of diseases because alteration of their concentrations in biological systems are somehow responsive for some diseases such as myocardial infarction, diabetes, peripheral vascular and so on. [1]     

Supercritical Fluid Extraction of Total Flavonoids from Leaves of Acanthopanax Senticosus Harms

Introduction The herbal plant Acanthopanax Senticosus Harms[1,2] is natural herb of Changbaishan in Jilin Province of China, which belongs to the Araliaceae family. As the ingredients of folk medicine, it has long been used to treat a variety of human diseases, such as cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, tumor, isochemic heart diseases, hypertension, rheumatic arthritis,etc.[2,3].     

Pulmonary Drugs and Genes Delivery Systems for Lung Disease Treatment

Pulmonary drugs and genes delivery systems have become an attractive approach in the treatment of lung diseases with the advantages of minimal drug loss,precise quantization,high local drugs concentration and low side effects.However,special attention should be paid to the biological barriers of the lung.The delivery systems need to be designed carefully in order to overcome these biological barriers and maximize the drugs and genes deposition to the lungs.Pulmonary drugs and genes delivery systems can offer some encouraging results for delivering drugs and genes to the lungs.Specifically,some lipid-based and polymer-based delivery systems could control and sustain the release of drugs and genes with minimal or negligible toxicity.This review focuses on the latest development of pulmonary delivery of drugs and genes for the treatment of various lung diseases.The barriers to the lung,the delivery devices,the route of the administration and the delivery systems for drugs and genes pulmonary delivery are described.Based on the rapid development of clinical requirement,novel approaches using delivery systems for pulmonary delivery drugs and genes need to be constructed,which is believed to play an important role in the therapy of lung diseases in the future.     

Adolescent alcohol exposure alters DNA and RNA modifications in peripheral blood by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analysis

Alcohol consumption is a critical risk factor contributing to a verity of human diseases. The incidence of alcohol use disorder increases across adolescence in recent years. Accumulating line of evidence suggests that alcohol-induced changes of DNA cytosine methylation(5-methyl-2-deoxycytidine, 5 m C) in genomes play an important role in the development of diseases. However, systemic investigation of the effects of adolescent alcohol exposure on DNA and RNA modifications is still lacked. Especia...     

Self-assembled nanochaperones enable the disaggregation of amyloid insulin fibrils

The deposition of highly ordered amyloid fibrils is recognized as a hallmark of amyloidosis diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.Disaggregating the amyloid fibrils is considered as one of the effective strategies for the control and treatment of amyloidosis diseases.In this article,by simulating the function of natural molecular chaperones,co-assembled block copolymer micelles with coordination groups of nitrilotriacetic acid(NTA)and hydrophobic microdomains of poly(Nisopropylacrylamide)(PNIPAM)on the surface were used as nanochaperones(n Chaps)to disaggregate amyloid insulin fibrils.Zinc ions chelated by NTA can bind the histidine imidazole residues while the PNIPAM microdomains can interact with the exposed hydrophobic sites on the amyloid insulin fibrils,which synergistically perturb the stability of amyloid insulin fibrils,loosen their structure,and finally promote their disaggregation.A combination of characterizations with fluorescence spectroscopy,transmission electron microscopy(TEM),dynamic hight scattering(DLS),and quartz crystal microbalance(QCM)demonstrated that mature amyloid insulin fibrils were completely disaggregated after incubating with n Chaps for 90 h.This study may provide a promising strategy for the development of n Chaps for the treatment of amyloidosis diseases.     

A New Acylated Iridoid Glucoside from Avicennia marina

Avicennia marina is one of the abundant components of mangrove ecosystems that mainly resident in the tropical and subtropical regions1. This plant has traditionally been used in Egypt for treatment of skin diseases2. We investigated the chemical constitu…     

Syntheses of polyamidoamine dendrimers starting from a hexadimensional core and application in gene transfer

Gene therapy refers to the concept and practice of applying gene to treat diseases. It may be defined as a method for inserting a functioning gene into the cells of a patient to correct an inborn error of metabolism (i.e. genetic abnormality or birth defect) or to provide a new function in a cell. There are numerous diseases that may be treated by gene therapy including genetic defects, com-mon illnesses such as cancer, AIDS and chronic diseases such as diabetes[1]. A gene medicine sys-tem c…     

Editorial

<正>In the last few years,with the development of science and technology,nanotheranostics combing disease diagnosis and therapy,has shown very promising potential for diagnosing and curing fetal diseases such as cancer,cardiovascular disease and AIDS.Nanotheranostics is a multidisciplinary area,which is to apply and further develop nanomedicine strategies for advanced theranostics.As nanotheranostics is extremely attractive for optimizing treatment outcomes in severe diseases,it will create the chance to greatly improve the quality of life for the     

Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry Used for Separation and Identification of Flavonoid Glycosides in Herba Epimedii Extracts

Herba Epimedii is the dried above-ground part of the genus Epimedium. Several herbs belonging to the genus Epimedium have been used in many variations of preparations and formulas for treating a wide range of diseases especially reinforcing Yang and toning the kidney by Chinese physicians for centuriesl'-~:. More than 130 chem-     

Electrochemical studies of 1,5-dihydroxynaphthalene as substrate for voltammetric enzyme immunoassay

Immunoassay is one of the biochemical analytical techniques using the specific antigen antibody com-plexation for analytical purposes. It has extensive ap-plication in clinical diagnostics, prevention and cure of diseases, and virus diagnostics. The presentation and progress of immunoassay methodology are one of the greatest achievements of bioanalytical chemistry. It is estimated that several-hundred millions of immuno-analytical determinations are carried out every year all over the world. E…     

Advances in Structure-function Relationships and Mechanism of Transporter Associated with Antigen Processing

The transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) belongs to the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter superfamily. Driven by ATP hydrolysis, TAP translocates antigenic peptides from the cytosol into the ER (endoplasmic reticulum) lumen where the antigenic peptides are loaded onto the HLA class Ⅰ molecules. Recently, numerous studies show that TAP is closely related with various diseases such as viral infections, autoimmune diseases, and different malignancies. In consideration of important roles of TAP in human adaptive immunity, this review summarizes the recent advances in structure-function relationships of crucial domains and transport mechanism systematically. The challenging problems and potential methods are also pointed out for in-depth researches.     

Preparation of new technetium-99m NNS/X complexes and selection for brain imaging agent

Quantification of regional cerebral blood flow(rCBF) plays an important role in the diagnosis ofvarious cerebrovascular and neurological diseases. Innuclear medicine, brain perfusion imaging can providesituation of whole or regional cerebral blood flowperfusion (CBF or rCBF) to neurologists, help to findabnormality of cerebral blood flow before cere-brovascular and neurological diseases induce patho-logical changes in configuration or structure of brain.They offer important information for …     

ALLELIC FREQUENCIES OF PLASMA ALPHA-1-ANTITRYPSIN IN CHINESE

Alpha-1-antitrypsin (Pi) types and subtypes in a Chinese population of 1049 unrelatedindividuals in Beijing were determined by separator isoelectric focusing. The low activityPi variant S and the deficient Pi variant Z, common in most Caucasian populations, are ab-sent in the Chinese population. The frequent Pi variant found in the Chinese population isa neutral mutant, Etokyo, which was only found in Japanese before. Thus, it is concludedthat, as a predisposition of obstructive or some other lung diseases and liver diseases, thegenetic determined deficiency of alpha-1-antitrypsin in Chinese is not so important as in mostCaucasian populations.     

Recent Advances in Self-assembled Nano-therapeutics

The applications of nanotechnology in biomedicine have gained considerable attentions in recent years owing to the great enhancement of therapeutic efficiency.Integration of self-assembly into nanotechnology has brought tremendous convenience during the formation of nano-carriers.Based on distinctive methods of self-assembly,nano-therapeutics have been developed to an impressive stage with the ability to perform site-specific delivery with temporal and spatial control.This review focuses on the recent advances in the preparing methods for nano-therapeutics,and their applications in the treatments of diseases.