Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) transplantation is a promising treatment strategy for spinal cord injury, but immunological rejection and possible tumor formation limit its application. The therapeutic ...effects of MSCs mainly depend on their release of soluble paracrine factors. Exosomes are essential for the secretion of these paracrine effectors. Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell-derived exosomes (BMSC-EXOs) can be substituted for BMSCs in cell transplantation. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, a rat model of T10 spinal cord injury was established using the impact method. Then, 30 minutes and 1 day after spinal cord injury, the rats were administered 200 μL exosomes via the tail vein (200 μg/mL; approximately 1 × 106 BMSCs). Treatment with BMSC-EXOs greatly reduced neuronal cell death, improved myelin arrangement and reduced myelin loss, increased pericyte/endothelial cell coverage on the vascular wall, decreased blood-spinal cord barrier leakage, reduced caspase 1 expression, inhibited interleukin-1β release, and accelerated locomotor functional recovery in rats with spinal cord injury. In the cell culture experiment, pericytes were treated with interferon-γ and tumor necrosis factor-α. Then, Lipofectamine 3000 was used to deliver lipopolysaccharide into the cells, and the cells were co-incubated with adenosine triphosphate to simulate injury in vitro. Pre-treatment with BMSC-EXOs for 8 hours greatly reduced pericyte pyroptosis and increased pericyte survival rate. These findings suggest that BMSC-EXOs may protect pericytes by inhibiting pyroptosis and by improving blood-spinal cord barrier integrity, thereby promoting the survival of neurons and the extension of nerve fibers, and ultimately improving motor function in rats with spinal cord injury. All protocols were conducted with the approval of the Animal Ethics Committee of Zhengzhou University on March 16, 2019.
Adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) are an important stem cell type separated from adipose tissue, with the properties of multilineage differentiation, easy availability, high proliferation potential, ...and self-renewal. Exosomes are novel frontiers of intercellular communication regulating the biological behaviors of cells, such as angiogenesis, immune modulation, proliferation, and migration. ASC-derived exosomes (ASC-exos) are important components released by ASCs paracrine, possessing multiple biological activities. Tissue regeneration requires coordinated “vital networks” of multiple growth factors, proteases, progenitors, and immune cells producing inflammatory cytokines. Recently, as cell-to-cell messengers, ASC-exos have received much attention for the fact that they are important paracrine mediators contributing to their suitability for tissue regeneration. ASC-exos, with distinct properties by encapsulating various types of bioactive cargoes, are endowed with great application potential in tissue regeneration, mechanically via the migration and proliferation of repair cells, facilitation of the neovascularization, and other specific functions in different tissues. Here, this article elucidated the research progress of ASC-exos about tissue regeneration in plastic and cosmetic surgery, including skin anti-aging therapy, dermatitis improvement, wound healing, scar removal, flap transplantation, bone tissue repair and regeneration, obesity prevention, fat grafting, breast cancer, and breast reconstruction. Deciphering the biological properties of ASC-exos will provide further insights for exploring novel therapeutic strategies of tissue regeneration in plastic and cosmetic surgery.
Aims and objectives
To establish an understanding of healthcare professionals' dementia knowledge and attitudes towards dementia care, and family carers' perceptions of dementia care in China.
...Background
Healthcare professionals and family carers of people with dementia deliver most of the dementia care in China. However, little research on healthcare professionals' dementia knowledge and attitudes towards dementia care, and family carers' dementia care perceptions has been conducted in China.
Methods
An integrative review was conducted and reported based on the PRISMA guidelines and Whittemore and Knafl's framework. Eight English databases were searched without date restriction: CINAHL Plus with Full Text, MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Embase, PsycINFO and Scopus; and three Chinese databases: China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chongqing Weipu and Wanfang, plus a manual search of reference lists.
Results
Thirty‐eight primary research papers were included in the review. Three themes were identified from the synthesis: (a) knowledge and competency; (b) attitudes towards dementia care; and (c) carers' burden and unmet needs. Healthcare professionals' dementia knowledge ranged from low to moderate levels and attitudes towards dementia care were generally negative. With low levels of knowledge of dementia and negative attitudes including stigma, family carers were under stress with insufficient support, and they expected more support from community nurses.
Conclusions
There is an apparent need for a national policy on healthcare professional education and training to improve dementia care practice in China. Such a policy may improve support services for family carers.
Relevance to clinical practice
Nurses, and particularly community nurses, are well‐positioned to support family carers in China. However, healthcare professionals in China are not prepared for this. Therefore, education and training on dementia care should be integrated into medical and nursing undergraduate programmes and provided for healthcare professionals after commencing employment, and strategies to reduce stigma are needed.
Background
This study aimed to evaluate the role of baseline circulating tumor cells (CTCs) before and during concurrent chemoradiotherapy and attempted to determine the impacts of CTCs on the ...outcomes in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.
Methods
CTCs were detected using a negative selection strategy and flow cytometry protocol.
Results
We observed a significant correlation between baseline CTCs and staging (P = 0.001). The CTC counts were significantly reduced within 2‐4 weeks in 47 concurrent chemoradiotherapy responders (P < 0.001). Change of CTC counts correlates with progression‐free survival (PFS, P = 0.01) and overall survival (OS, P = 0.01). CTC decline status was an independent prognostic factor in PFS (P = 0.03) and OS (P = 0.05) in multivariate analyses.
Conclusion
In chemoradiotherapy responders, CTCs are significantly reduced. CTC decline within the first month indicates a longer PFS and OS, suggesting that the dynamics of CTCs could be more important than CTC number alone.
Recently, flexible multifunctional sensors have attracted widespread attention from around the world. Here, we propose a novel PS/MXene-based triboelectric nanogenerator (PM-TENG), which has a drum ...structure design. Through comparative experiments, the optimal ratio of polystyrene (PS) materials was explored. The PS film and nylon film form the triboelectric materials, and copper foil acts as the conducive electrode. From the results, the open-circuit voltage (Voc) and short-circuit current (Isc) of the PM-TENG based on 35 mg/ml content of PS can reach 141 V and 5.9 µA, respectively. In addition, when the resistance value of the external load is 50 MΩ, the PM-TENG exhibits a maximum output power of 123 µW. Due to its excellent flexibility, the PM-TENG can be installed on the shoulders, neck, wrist, elbow, knee, and ankle to achieve all-round motion monitoring of football players. This research can promote the application of TENG sensors in the football monitoring field.
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) plays an indispensable role for Industry 4.0, where people are committed to implement a general, scalable, and secure IIoT system to be adopted across various ...industries. However, existing IIoT systems are vulnerable to single point of failure and malicious attacks, which cannot provide stable services. Due to the resilience and security promise of blockchain, the idea of combining blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) gains considerable interest. However, blockchains are power-intensive and low-throughput, which are not suitable for power-constrained IoT devices. To tackle these challenges, we present a blockchain system with credit-based consensus mechanism for IIoT. We propose a credit-based proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism for IoT devices, which can guarantee system security and transaction efficiency simultaneously. In order to protect sensitive data confidentiality, we design a data authority management method to regulate the access to sensor data. In addition, our system is built based on directed acyclic graph -structured blockchains, which is more efficient than the Satoshi-style blockchain in performance. We implement the system on Raspberry Pi, and conduct a case study for the smart factory. Extensive evaluation and analysis results demonstrate that credit-based PoW mechanism and data access control are secure and efficient in IIoT.
We study the genuine tripartite nonlocality (GTN) and the genuine tripartite entanglement (GTE) of Dirac fields in the background of a Schwarzschild black hole. We find that the Hawking radiation ...degrades both the physically accessible GTN and the physically accessible GTE. The former suffers from “sudden death” at some critical Hawking temperature, and the latter approaches to the nonzero asymptotic value in the limit of infinite Hawking temperature. We also find that the Hawking effect cannot generate the physically inaccessible GTN, but can generate the physically inaccessible GTE for fermion fields in curved spacetime. These results show that on the one hand the GTN cannot pass through the event horizon of black hole, but the GTE do can, and on the other hand the surviving physically accessible GTE and the generated physically inaccessible GTE for fermions in curved spacetime are all not nonlocal. Some monogamy relations between the physically accessible GTE and the physically inaccessible GTE are found.
The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) that links extracellular signals to the control of cell survival, growth, proliferation and differentiation. Due to its ...frequent overexpression and hyperactivation, EGFR has been a therapeutic target for human malignancies. Unfortunately, the specialized inhibitors of EGFR or EGFR-mediated pathways have not yet achieved the desired clinical effects. Therefore, it is necessary to elucidate the EGFR-mediated molecular basis of tumourigenesis, development and therapeutic resistance and to identify potential therapeutic targets. Interestingly, emerging research has indicated that autophagy is closely related to tumourigenesis, tumour progression and chemoresistance. Both autophagy upregulation and downregulation have been observed in cancers, suggesting its dual oncogenic and tumour suppressor properties during malignant transformation. Importantly, EGFR has been demonstrated to be a critical determinant of whether autophagy has a cytoprotective or cytotoxic effect. Therefore, here, we mainly focus on the function of EGFR in autophagy, especially the potential mechanism. The EGFR-mediated pathways or proteins involved in autophagy regulation include (1) the EGFR-mTOR pathway; (2) the EGFR-RAS pathway; (3) EGFR-Beclin1; (4) the EGFR-STAT3 pathway and (5) EGFR-LAPTM4B (oncoprotein lysosomal-associated transmembrane protein 4B). In addition, we also describe the role of EGFR-mediated autophagy in chemoresistance and tumour therapy. We attempt to summarized the mechanism by which EGFR-mediated signalling pathways participate in regulating autophagy and to investigate how to use the existing knowledge to identify potential cancer therapeutic targets.
•EGFR or EGFR mutation-mediated autophagy plays a critical role in tumorigenesis, tumor progress and therapy resistance.•The role of EGFR-mediated autophagy in tumorigenesis and therapy resistance is highly cell-dependent.•Regulating EGFR-mediated autophagy might be a new strategy for the treatment of EGFR deregulated tumors.
Tauopathies are a class of neurodegenerative disorders characterized by neuronal and/or glial tau-positive inclusions.
Clinically, tauopathies can present with a range of phenotypes that include ...cognitive/behavioral-disorders, movement disorders, language disorders and non-specific amnestic symptoms in advanced age. Pathologically, tauopathies can be classified based on the predominant tau isoforms that are present in the inclusion bodies (i.e., 3R, 4R or equal 3R:4R ratio). Imaging, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood-based tau biomarkers have the potential to be used as a routine diagnostic strategy and in the evaluation of patients with tauopathies. As tauopathies are strongly linked neuropathologically and genetically to tau protein abnormalities, there is a growing interest in pursuing of tau-directed therapeutics for the disorders. Here we synthesize emerging lessons on tauopathies from clinical, pathological, genetic, and experimental studies toward a unified concept of these disorders that may accelerate the therapeutics.
Since tauopathies are still untreatable diseases, efforts have been made to depict clinical and pathological characteristics, identify biomarkers, elucidate underlying pathogenesis to achieve early diagnosis and develop disease-modifying therapies.