Tao Wang

The Journal retracts the article “MiR-122 Induces Radiosensitization in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Cell Line”

We developed an ultrasensitive and highly selective method to quantify iodate (IO₃^–) in iodized salt and biological samples. In the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system, IO₃^– was injected with sampler and reduced to iodide (I^–) online using a Coulomb detector (CD) as a pre-column reactor, retained by C18 column with the help of ion pairs, and then determined by an amperometric detector (AD). For analysis of IO₃^–, several parameters and reactive conditions of Coulomb detector, including applied potential, pH value, and salt concentration, were optimized to obtain the best reduction efficiency. The optimized HPLC–CD-AD method was found to be linear over a wide range of IO₃^– concentration (0.05–0.25 μg/mL) with appreciable recovery rates (86.90–94.70%) of quality controls at excellent detection limits (100 pg) and acceptable variability. The analysis of IO₃^– in actual samples, such as urine of volunteers, iodized salt, and seawater, discovered that the method has high selectivity and little interference. It can be concluded that the proposed method was ultrasensitive and highly selective in the trace detection of IO₃.

Background: Unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (u-HCC) still accounts for the majority of newly diagnosed HCC which with poor prognosis. In the era of systemic therapy, combination therapy with programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) inhibitors and tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) has become mainstream. Hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy (HAIC) as a local treatment has also shown a strong anti-tumor effect. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy and safety of HAIC, PD-1 inhibitors plus TKIs for u-HCC.Methods: This retrospective study included patients with initially u-HCC between October 2020 to April 2022 who had received at least one cycle of therapy with HAIC, PD-1 inhibitors plus TKIs. The primary outcome included overall response rate (ORR), the disease control rate (DCR), surgical conversion rate, progression-free survival (PFS) and treatment-related adverse events.Results: A total of 145 patients were included in the study. The median treatment cycle of HAIC and PD-1 inhibitors were 3 and 4, respectively. According to the modified RECIST criteria, the best ORR was 57.2% (83/145), 9 had achieved complete response (CR), DCR was 89.7% (130/145). Median time to achieve CR or PR was 65 days. Surgical conversion rate was 18.6% (27/145), seven patients (7/27,25.9%) achieved pathological complete response (pCR). The median follow-up was 12.5 months (4.5-20 months), and the median PFS was 9.7 months. Subgroup analysis showed that Child-pugh A patients had higher DCR (92.2% vs 79.3%, p=0.041) than Child-pugh B patients, as well as increased successful conversion rate (22.4% vs 3.4%, p=0.019). Patients without vascular invasion and extrahepatic metastases showed higher PR (63.4% vs 43.3%, pppp0.05). The incidence rate of grade 3/4 treatment-related AEs was 17.7% without fatal events.Conclusion: The triple combination therapy of HAIC and PD-1 inhibitors plus TKIs for patients with initially unresectable HCC exhibited satisfactory efficacy with tolerable toxicity.

Formaldehyde (HCHO) is a ubiquitous indoor pollutant that seriously endangers human health. The removal of formaldehyde effectively at room temperature has always been a challenging problem. Here, a kind of amino-fullerene derivative (C₆₀-EDA)-modified titanium dioxide (C₆₀-EDA/TiO₂) was prepared by one-step hydrothermal method, which could degrade the formaldehyde under solar light irradiation at room temperature with high efficiency and stability. Importantly, the introduction of C₆₀-EDA not only increases the adsorption of the free formaldehyde molecules but also improves the utilization of sunlight and suppresses photoelectron-hole recombination. The experimental results indicated that the C₆₀-EDA/TiO₂ nanoparticles exhibit much higher formaldehyde removal efficiency than carboxyl-fullerene-modified TiO₂, pristine TiO₂ nanoparticles, and almost all other reported formaldehyde catalysts especially in the aspect of the quality of formaldehyde that is treated by catalyst with unit mass (m_HCHO/m_catalyst = 40.85 mg/g), and the removal efficiency has kept more than 96% after 12 cycles. Finally, a potential formaldehyde degradation pathway was deduced based on the situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectrometry (DRIFTS) and reaction intermediates. This work provides some indications into the design and fabrication of the catalysts with excellent catalytic performances for HCHO removal at room temperature.

Fullerene is one of the nanomaterials that has a value in dermatological and cosmetic applications. In present work, we designed and prepared water‐soluble nano‐scale C60 encompassed by sodium hyaluronate. The rat ear swelling test was utilized to evaluate the anti‐inflammatory activity of encompassed C60. The measurement shows that the rat ear swelling rate of C60 administrated group is reduced to less than 10%, which shows good anti‐inflammatory activity. Its anti‐inflammatory activity is roughly calculated as 10 times than that of dipotassium glycyrrhizinate and five times than that of tanshinone. In conclusion, the fullerenes encapsulated by sodium hyaluronate have great potential in skin care and auxiliary treatment of dermatosis.

In the field of underwater acoustic signal processing, broadband array signal processing is an important research issue, which is more complex than that of narrowband. Broadband passive localization of underwater acoustic sources is investigated in this study. In order to improve the ability to locate multiple radiation sources which are emitted from ships, the orthogonal propagator method (OPM) is proposed to estimate direction of arrival (DOA) for the target. Based on the theory of spatial spectrum estimation, the linear decomposition of the covariance matrix is adopted to form the orthogonal propagator, and the spatial spectrum is constructed according to orthogonality of subspaces. Then, the directions of ship radiation noises are determined by searching the extreme points of the spatial spectrum. For broadband underwater acoustic signals, the non-coherent subspace method is used to average the effective frequency points in bandwidth to reduce noise interference, and OPM algorithm operating in broadband underwater acoustic signal, on arbitrary sonar array, is derived. In order to verify this method, numerical simulations are conducted to test its performance in localization accuracy, beam width and spatial resolution. During the simulations, a uniform linear array consisting of 96 elements is designed. Additionally, comparisons between the proposed method and conventional beamforming technique are conducted. Comparison results show that the OPM method performs better in spatial directivity and spatial resolution.

The oral administration of water-soluble chemotherapeutical agents is limited by their serious gastrointestinal side effects, instability at intestinal pH, and poor absorption. Aiming to solve these problems, we chose topotecan (TPT) as a model drug and developed a novel lipid formulation containing core-shell lipid nanoparticle (CLN) that makes the water-soluble drug to ‘dissolve’ in oil. TPT molecules can be encapsulated into nanoparticles surrounded by oil barrier while avoiding the direct contact with intestinal environment, thus easing the intestinal hydrolytic degradation and gastrointestinal (GI) irritation. Microstructure and mean particle size of TPT-CLN were characterized by Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), respectively. The average size of nanoparticles was approximately 60 nm with a homogeneous distribution in shapes of spheres or ellipsoid. According to in vitro stability studies, more initial form of TPT was observed in presence of lipid nanoparticle compared with free topotecan solution in artificial intestinal juice (pH 6.5). After oral administration of TPT-CLN in rats, AUC and C_max of TPT were all increased compared with free TPT, indicating significant enhancement of oral absorption. Intestinal lymphatic transport was confirmed as the major way for CLN to enhance oral absorption of TPT by the treatment of blocking chylomicron flow. Lower GI irritation of TPT-CLN was observed in the gastrointestinal damage studies. The in vivo antitumor activity of TPT-CLN showed an improved antitumor efficacy by oral treatment of TPT-CLN compared to free TPT. From the obtained data, the systems appear an attractive progress in oral administration of topotecan.

MiR-122 is a novel tumor suppresser and its expression induces cell cycle arrest, or apoptosis, and inhibits cell proliferation in multiple cancer cells, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. Radioresistance of cancer cell leads to the major drawback of radiotherapy for NSCLC and the induction of radiosensitization could be a useful strategy to fix this problem. The present work investigates the function of miR-122 in inducing radiosensitization in A549 cell, a type of NSCLC cells. MiR-122 induces the radiosensitization of A549 cells. MiR-122 also boosts the inhibitory activity of ionizing radiation (IR) on cancer cell anchor-independent growth and invasion. Moreover, miR-122 reduced the expression of its targeted genes related to tumor-survival or cellular stress response. These results indicate that miR-122 would be a novel strategy for NSCLC radiation-therapy.