Panax ginseng, also called Asian or Korean ginseng, has long been traditionally used in Korea and China to treat various diseases. The major active ingredients of P. ginseng are ginsenosides, which ...have been shown to have a variety of therapeutic effects, including antioxidation, anti-inflammatory, vasorelaxation, antiallergic, antidiabetic, and anticancer. To date, approximately 40 ginsenoside components have been reported. Current research is concentrating on using a single ginseng compound, one of the ginsenosides, instead of the total ginseng compounds, to determine the mechanisms of ginseng and ginsenosides. Recent in vitro and in vivo results show that ginseng has beneficial effects on cardiac and vascular diseases through efficacy, including antioxidation, control of vasomotor function, modulation of ion channels and signal transduction, improvement of lipid profiles, adjustment of blood pressure, improvement in cardiac function, and reduction in platelet adhesion. This review aims to provide valuable information on the traditional uses of ginseng and ginsenosides, their therapeutic applications in animal models and humans, and the pharmacological action of ginseng and ginsenosides.
A novel transfer‐printing method for high‐performance all‐plastic transparent electrodes is demonstrated. A solution process using H2SO4 not only dramatically enhances the electrical conductivity of ...poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(4‐styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) over 4000 S cm−1 but also chemically modifies its adhesion properties, thereby enabling expeditious “pick‐and‐place” transfer onto arbitrary surfaces using elastomeric stamps. Flexible and transparent optoelectronic devices with transferred PEDOT:PSS electrodes show superb performances.
Transition metal oxides (TMOs) have attracted considerable attention owing to their strong anchoring ability and natural abundance. However, their single‐site adsorption toward sulfur (S) species ...significantly lowers the possibility of S species reacting with Li+ in the electrolyte and increases the reaction barrier. This study investigates molecular modification by coupling the TMO structure with Li+ conductive polymer ligands, and vanadyl ethylene glycolate (VEG) is successfully synthesized by introducing organic ligands into the VOx crystal structure. In addition to the strong interaction between the VOx and lithium polysulfides via the V–S bond, the groups in the VEG polymer ligands can reversibly couple/decouple with Li+ in the electrolyte. Such dual‐site adsorption enables a smooth dynamic adsorption‐diffusion process. Accordingly, the VEG‐based Li–S cells exhibit excellent rate reversibility, cyclic stability, and a long cycle life without the addition of conducting agents. Encouragingly, the VEG‐based cells also exhibit close and excellent capacity decays of 0.081%, 0.078%, and 0.095% at 0, 25, and 50 °C (1 C for 200 cycles), respectively. This work provides a novel approach for developing advanced catalysts that can realize Li–S batteries with long‐term durability, fast charge‐discharge properties, and applications in a wide temperature range.
Dual‐site adsorption‐catalytic conversion! Dual‐site adsorption enabled by V and adjacent O sites via V–S and Li–O reduces the distance between S species and Li+ to nearly the interatomic distance, which significantly improves the anchoring efficiency and catalytic activity during the conversion of LiPSs. Therefore, excellent electrochemical performance can be achieved over a wide range of temperatures.
The advancement in virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) has been achieved by breakthroughs in the realistic perception of virtual elements. Although VR/AR technology is advancing fast, enhanced ...sensor functions, long‐term wearability, and seamless integration with other electronic components are still required for more natural interactions with the virtual world. Here, this report reviews the recent advances in multifunctional wearable sensors and integrated functional devices for VR/AR applications. Specified device designs, packaging strategies, and interactive physiological sensors are summarized based on their methodological approaches for sensory inputs and virtual feedback. In addition, limitations of the existing systems, key challenges, and future directions are discussed. It is envisioned that this progress report's outcomes will expand the insights on wearable functional sensors and device interfaces toward next‐generation VR/AR technologies.
This progress report delivers technological summaries on recent advances in VR/AR systems whose key functionalities and performances are achieved by wearable sensory and feedback systems. Sections have been categorized to describe the individual progress in various wearable‐enabled VR/AR systems based on their associated human sensory systems and physiology (e.g., vision, motion, physiological signals, and haptic).
Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE), designed in wearable and implantable configurations, have enormous applications in advanced healthcare, rapid disease diagnostics, and persistent human-machine ...interfaces. Soft, contoured geometries and time-dynamic deformation of the targeted tissues require high flexibility and stretchability of the integrated bioelectronics. Recent progress in developing and engineering soft materials has provided a unique opportunity to design various types of mechanically compliant and deformable systems. Here, we summarize the required properties of soft materials and their characteristics for configuring sensing and substrate components in wearable and implantable devices and systems. Details of functionality and sensitivity of the recently developed FHE are discussed with the application areas in medicine, healthcare, and machine interactions. This review concludes with a discussion on limitations of current materials, key requirements for next generation materials, and new application areas.
Despite encouraging results from preliminary studies of anticancer therapies, the lack of tumor specificity remains an important issue in the modern pharmaceutical industry. New findings indicate ...that biotin or biotin-conjugates could be favorably assimilated by tumor cells that over-express biotin-selective transporters. Furthermore, biotin can form stable complexes with avidin and its bacterial counterpart streptavidin. The strong bridging between avidin and biotin moieties on other molecules is a proven adaptable tool with broad biological applications. Under these circumstances, a biotin moiety is certainly an attractive choice for live-cell imaging, biosensing, and target delivery.
A major challenge in photodynamic cancer therapy (PDT) is avoiding PDT-induced hypoxia, which can lead to cancer recurrence and progression through activation of various angiogenic factors and ...significantly reduce treatment outcomes. Reported here is an acetazolamide (AZ)-conjugated BODIPY photosensitizer (AZ-BPS) designed to mitigate the effects of PDT-based hypoxia by combining the benefits of anti-angiogenesis therapy with PDT. AZ-BPS showed specific affinity to aggressive cancer cells (MDA-MB-231 cells) that overexpress carbonic anhydrase IX (CAIX). It displayed enhanced photocytotoxicity compared to a reference compound, BPS, which is an analogous PDT agent that lacks an acetazolamide unit. AZ-BPS also displayed an enhanced in vivo efficacy in a xenograft mouse tumor regrowth model relative to BPS, an effect attributed to inhibition of tumor angiogenesis by both PDT-induced ROS generation and CAIX knockdown. AZ-BPS was evaluated successfully in clinical samples collected from breast cancer patients. We thus believe that the combined approach described here represents an attractive therapeutic approach to targeting CAIX-overexpressing tumors.
Abstract
Transcription factors (TFs) are major trans-acting factors in transcriptional regulation. Therefore, elucidating TF-target interactions is a key step toward understanding the regulatory ...circuitry underlying complex traits such as human diseases. We previously published a reference TF-target interaction database for humans-TRRUST (Transcriptional Regulatory Relationships Unraveled by Sentence-based Text mining)-which was constructed using sentence-based text mining, followed by manual curation. Here, we present TRRUST v2 (www.grnpedia.org/trrust) with a significant improvement from the previous version, including a significantly increased size of the database consisting of 8444 regulatory interactions for 800 TFs in humans. More importantly, TRRUST v2 also contains a database for TF-target interactions in mice, including 6552 TF-target interactions for 828 mouse TFs. TRRUST v2 is also substantially more comprehensive and less biased than other TF-target interaction databases. We also improved the web interface, which now enables prioritization of key TFs for a physiological condition depicted by a set of user-input transcriptional responsive genes. With the significant expansion in the database size and inclusion of the new web tool for TF prioritization, we believe that TRRUST v2 will be a versatile database for the study of the transcriptional regulation involved in human diseases.
Molecular imaging with positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is a well-established and important in vivo technique to evaluate fundamental ...biological processes and unravel the role of neurotransmitter receptors in various neuropsychiatric disorders. Specific ligands are available for PET/SPECT studies of dopamine, serotonin, and opiate receptors, but corresponding development of radiotracers for receptors of glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter in mammalian brain, has lagged behind. This state of affairs has persisted despite the central importance of glutamate neurotransmission in brain physiology and in disorders such as stroke, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and neurodegenerative diseases. Recent years have seen extensive efforts to develop useful ligands for molecular imaging of subtypes of the ionotropic (
-methyl-
-aspartate (NMDA), kainate, and AMPA/quisqualate receptors) and metabotropic glutamate receptors (types I, II, and III mGluRs). We now review the state of development of radioligands for glutamate receptor imaging, placing main emphasis on the suitability of available ligands for reliable in vivo applications. We give a brief account of the radiosynthetic approach for selected molecules. In general, with the exception of ligands for the GluN2B subunit of NMDA receptors, there has been little success in developing radiotracers for imaging ionotropic glutamate receptors; failure of ligands for the PCP/MK801 binding site in vivo doubtless relates their dependence on the open, unblocked state of the ion channel. Many AMPA and kainite receptor ligands with good binding properties in vitro have failed to give measurable specific binding in the living brain. This may reflect the challenge of developing brain-penetrating ligands for amino acid receptors, compounded by conformational differences in vivo. The situation is better with respect to mGluR imaging, particularly for the mGluR5 subtype. Several successful PET ligands serve for investigations of mGluRs in conditions such as schizophrenia, depression, substance abuse and aging. Considering the centrality and diversity of glutamatergic signaling in brain function, we have relatively few selective and sensitive tools for molecular imaging of ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors. Further radiopharmaceutical research targeting specific subtypes and subunits of the glutamate receptors may yet open up new investigational vistas with broad applications in basic and clinical research.
Despite the high expectation of deformable and see‐through displays for future ubiquitous society, current light‐emitting diodes (LEDs) fail to meet the desired mechanical and optical properties, ...mainly because of the fragile transparent conducting oxides and opaque metal electrodes. Here, by introducing a highly conductive nanofibrillated conducting polymer (CP) as both deformable transparent anode and cathode, ultraflexible and see‐through polymer LEDs (PLEDs) are demonstrated. The CP‐based PLEDs exhibit outstanding dual‐side light‐outcoupling performance with a high optical transmittance of 75% at a wavelength of 550 nm and with an excellent mechanical durability of 9% bending strain. Moreover, the CP‐based PLEDs fabricated on 4 µm thick plastic foils with all‐solution processing have extremely deformable and foldable light‐emitting functionality. This approach is expected to open a new avenue for developing wearable and attachable transparent displays.
Deformable and see‐through polymer light‐emitting diodes (PLEDs) are developed by using a highly conductive nanofibrillated conducting polymer (CP) as both ultraflexible transparent anode and cathode. The CP‐based PLEDs fabricated on plastic foils with all‐solution processing exhibit outstanding dual‐side light‐outcoupling performance and rollable/foldable light‐emitting functionality with a high optical transmittance of 75% at a wavelength of 550 nm.
PDF
