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Background Radiotherapy is a conventional and effective local treatment for breast cancer. However, residual or recurrent tumors appears frequently because of radioresistance. Novel predictive marker and the potential therapeutic targets of breast cancer radioresistance needs to be investigated. Methods In this study, we screened all 10 asparagine-linked glycosylation (ALG) members in breast cancer patients’ samples by RT-PCR. Cell viability after irradiation (IR) was determined by CCK-8 assay and flow cytometry. The radiosensitivity of cell lines with different ALG3 expression was determined with the colony formation assay by fitting the multi-target single hit model to the surviving fractions. Cancer stem-like traits were assessed by RT-PCR, Western blot, and flow cytometry. The mechanisms of ALG3 influencing radiosensitivity was detected by Western blot and immunoprecipitation. And the effect of ALG3 on tumor growth after IR was verified in an orthotopic xenograft tumor models. The association of ALG3 with prognosis of breast cancer patients was confirmed by immunohistochemistry. Results ALG3 was the most significantly overexpressing gene among ALG family in radioresistant breast cancer tissue. Overexpression of ALG3 predicted poor clinicopathological characteristics and overall survival (OS), and early local recurrence-free survival (LRFS) in breast cancer patients. Upregulating ALG3 enhanced radioresistance and cancer stemness in vitro and in vivo. Conversely, silencing ALG3 increased the radiosensitivity and repressed cancer stemness in vitro, and more importantly inhibition of ALG3 effectively increased the radiosensitivity of breast cancer cells in vivo. Mechanistically, our results further revealed ALG3 promoted radioresistance and cancer stemness by inducing glycosylation of TGF-β receptor II (TGFBR2). Importantly, both attenuation of glycosylation using tunicamycin and inhibition of TGFBR2 using LY2109761 differentially abrogated the stimulatory effect of ALG3 overexpression on cancer stemness and radioresistance. Finally, our findings showed that radiation played an important role in preventing early recurrence in breast cancer patients with low ALG3 levels, but it had limited efficacy in ALG3-overexpressing breast cancer patients. Conclusion Our results suggest that ALG3 may serve as a potential radiosensitive marker, and an effective target to decrease radioresistance by regulating glycosylation of TGFBR2 in breast cancer. For patients with low ALG3 levels, radiation remains an effective mainstay therapy to prevent early recurrence in breast cancer.

Designing and fabricating highly active and efficient catalysts are of vital importance for the practical applications of direct ethylene glycol fuel cells (DEGFCs). In this study, we employ a feasible one-pot synthetic method to construct highly monodispersed PtCu nanospheres (NSs) as high-efficiency anode electrocatalysts for DEGFCs. Interestingly, the optimized carbon supported Pt1Cu1 NSs can display the highest mass activity of 2146.9 mA mg−1 in 1 M KOH + 1 M EG solution under the scan rate of 50 mV s−1, which is 1.9 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C catalysts. This is ascribed to the favorable electronic effect between Pt and Cu, which is beneficial for ethylene glycol oxidation reaction (EGOR) in fuel cells. Meanwhile, such monodispersed Pt1Cu1 NSs can also exhibit excellent durability, where the Pt1Cu1 catalyst retains 62.6% of the initial value after the cyclic voltammetry of 500 cycles. This work not only provides a significant approach for designing catalysts for fuel cells, but also constructs a novel class of active and stable electrocatalysts for EGOR.

Pursuing high-effective electrocatalysts is of paramount importance yet a great challenge, drawbacks such as irregular morphology, weak corrosion resistance, and poor anti-poisoning that limited their catalytic performance. Kinds of strategies have been developed to synthesize nanocatalysts with properties of low-cost, high-performance, and long lifetime. Pt-based catalyst is one of the most effective anodic materials for direct fuel cells (DFCs), especially towards ethylene glycol oxidation reaction (EGOR). Herein, we integrate the advantages of both composition and morphology to finally synthesize a series of PtBi chain-typed nanoflowers (NFs) serving as high-efficiency anode catalysts. The Pt1Bi1 chain-typed NFs show much higher catalytic performances than Pt1Bi2, Pt2Bi1, and commercial Pt/C catalysts with the mass activity (1.17, 1.64, and 5.71 times higher, respectively) and retained mass activities (1.68, 3.26, and 13.1 times higher, respectively). Our present work opens a new way to promote the electrocatalytic activity and stability via synthesizing well-defined PtBi NFs with chain-typed structure. We also believe that the as-obtained PtBi NFs can be one of the candidates as promising anodic catalysts in DFCs.

The development of efficient anode nanocatalysts with high performance for direct ethylene glycol fuel cells is highly desirable and still difficult due to the sluggish kinetics at the anode. For that reason, it is necessary to engineer cost-effective Pd-based catalysts with fascinating structure and superior activity. Inspired by this, we shed light on a facile self-template one-pot approach to synthesize sub-24 nm PdAg hollow nanodendrites with tunable compositions. More importantly, owing to the exquisite hollow nanostructure and electronic effect, as well as synergistic role, the as-prepared unique binary PdAg nanocatalysts show outstanding mass activity of 4168.8 mA mgPd−1 for ethylene glycol oxidation reaction under the alkaline medium, 3.8-fold enhancements than that of commercial Pd/C catalysts. Remarkably, based on this facile synthesis method and superior electrocatalytic performance of as-prepared catalysts, we believe that our efforts will open a new way to promote the commercialization of fuel cells to some extent.

Electrochemical property and detection performance of nanocatalysts are largely affected by the component and morphology. Here, an advanced class of PtCu nanocrystal with uniform trifurcate structure has been synthesized by using KI as the structure-directing agent during the reduction process. Due to the large surface area of such synthesized dendritic trifurcate nanocrystal and the synergistic effect between Pt and Cu, this nanocatalyst performed nicely when applied it to the electrochemical detection of caffeic acid. Specifically, the detection limit is 0.35 μM (S/N = 3) and the linear range is wide from 1.2 μM-1.9 mM. The finding may be beneficial for developing novel and high-performance sensors for the monitoring of dietetical and environmental safety.

Although explosive progresses have been achieved in the field of water splitting, the design and development of stable and inexpensive electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution remain a formidable challenge. Herein, the cost-efficient two dimensional (2D) phosphorus-doped CoFe oxyhydroxide nanosheets (denoted as CoFeP NSs) are successfully engineered and showing exceptional oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity and chemical stability in 1 M KOH solution. This unique 2D nanosheet structure facilitates the mass transfer and electron transport, resulting in the remarkable OER activity that delivers a current density of 10 mA cm−2 at a low overpotential of 305 mV with an ultra-small Tafel slope 49.6 mV/dec. More significantly, the doped P also plays a vital role in modulating the surface active sites, leading to the substantial enhancement of electrocatalytic performances. Our study provides a facile one-pot method for the successful fabrication of 2D P-doped CoFe NSs which display superior electrocatalytic performance, shedding great promise for environment and energy-related fields.

Additional file 5: Supplementary Figure 5. (A, B) Radioresistance-associated pathways were examined by luciferase assay to find out the most influenced pathway after ALG3-knocked out. Each bar represents the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. All data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test. (C) mRNA expression level of several genes that regulated by TGF-β pathway in ALG3-sg cells or cells treated by tunicamycin compared with ALG3 control cells were detected by RT-PCR. GAPDH was detected as a loading control in RT-PCR. (D) Upregulation of ALG3 decreased the apoptosis ratio, whereas inhibition of TGFBR2 increased the apoptosis ratio of ALG3-transduced cells after radiation treatment, which were detected by flow cytometry. (E) Statistical graphs of apoptotic cells proportion in the vector, ALG3-vector +LY2109761(TGFBR2 inhibitor), ALG3-transduced, and ALG3-transduced +LY2109761 cells were plotted. Each bar represents the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. Data were analyzed by Student’s t-test. (F) Upregulation of ALG3 led to increasing the number of spheres, while inhibition of TGFBR2 decreased the number of spheres in ALG3-overexpressing cells, which were detected by secondary sphere assay. Each bar represents the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. Data were analyzed by Student’s t-test. (G) Upregulation of ALG3 led to increasing proportion of the CD44+CD24−subpopulation, whereas inhibition of TGFBR2 decreased proportion of the CD44+CD24− subpopulation in ALG3-transduced cells. Each bar represents the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. All data were analyzed by Student’s t-test. *P

Additional file 9: Table S2. Association of ALG3 expression with TP53 status and tumor type.

Additional file 2: Supplementary Figure 2. (A) ALG3 expression after transduction in MCF-7 and ZR-75-30 cell lines was confirmed by Western blot. (B) Representative images of colony assays, with cells exposed to 0,2,4,6 Gy X ray treatment were as shown. (C) Representative image of local radiation treatment was as shown. (D) Immunohistochemistry image of tumor tissues from ALG3-transduced mice depicts successful upregulation of ALG3. Original magnification, 200x and 400x. scale bar = 50 μm. (E) Immunohistochemistry images showed that tumor tissues from ALG3-transduced mice overexpressing Ki67. Original magnification, 200x and 400x. scale bar = 50 μm. (F) Cleaved caspase-3 activity was performed on tumor tissues from mice. *** P

Additional file 6: Supplementary Figure 6. (A–C) Kaplan–Meier analysis using the public breast cancer data sets showed that the ALG3 overexpression indicates shorter RFS, PPS, and OS. Website, https://kmplot.com/analysis/ . (D, E) Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that ALG3 overexpression indicates shorter RFS and OS in the TCGA database.

Additional file 12: Table S5. The detail information of colony assay in MDA-MB-231 cell line.

Additional file 8: Table S1. Molecular baseline characteristics of patients.

Additional file 7: Supplementary Figure 7. (A-B) LRFS and OS of different tumor type patients, stratified by high and low ALG3 expression, were analyzed by Kaplan-Meier analysis with log-rank test. (C-D) Kaplan–Meier curves of LRFS and OS were plotted to evaluate the predictive value of ALG3 in patients grouped by tumor type and receiving radiotherapy or not. (E) Kaplan–Meier curves of LRFS were plotted to evaluate if radiotherapy contribute to prognosis of patients with ALG3 overexpressing in different tumor type. (F) LRFS and OS of patients with different p53 status, stratified by high and low ALG3 expression, were analyzed by Kaplan-Meier analysis with log-rank test. (G) LRFS of patients with mutational p53 who have received radiotherapy or not, stratified by ALG3 expression was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier analysis with log-rank test. (H) Kaplan–Meier curves of LRFS curves were plotted to evaluate if radiotherapy contribute to prognosis of patients with ALG3 overexpressing or with mutational p53.

Additional file 4: Supplementary Figure 4. (A) Analysis of correlation between ALG3 expression and cell cycle related genes based on TCGA database were performed. (B) Cyclin B1, cyclin B2, and CDK4 expression were up-regulated in ALG3-tansduced cells and down-regulated in ALG3-knocked out cells. α-Tubulin was detected as a loading control in Western blot. (C, D) Statistical graphs of secondary sphere formation assay in breast cancer cells were plotted. Each bar represents the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. All data were analyzed by Student’s t-test and one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparison test. *P

Ubiquinol-cytochrome c reductase hinge protein (UQCRH) is the hinge protein for the multi-subunit complex III of the mitochondrial electron transport chain and is involved in the electron transfer reaction between cytochrome c1 and c. Recent genome-wide transcriptomic and epigenomic profiling of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) identified UQCRH as the top-ranked gene showing inverse correlation between DNA hypermethylation and mRNA downregulation. The function and underlying mechanism of UQCRH in the Warburg effect metabolism of ccRCC have not been characterized. Here, we verified the clinical association of low UQCRH expression and shorter survival of ccRCC patients through in silico analysis and identified KMRC2 as a highly relevant ccRCC cell line that displays hypermethylation-induced UQCRH extinction. Ectopic overexpression of UQCRH in KMRC2 restored mitochondrial membrane potential, increased oxygen consumption, and attenuated the Warburg effect at the cellular level. UQCRH overexpression in KMRC2 induced higher apoptosis and slowed down in vitro and in vivo tumor growth. UQCRH knockout by CRISPR/Cas9 had little impact on the metabolism and proliferation of 786O ccRCC cell line, suggesting the dispensable role of UQCRH in cells that have entered a Warburg-like state through other mechanisms. Together, our study suggests that loss of UQCRH expression by hypermethylation may promote kidney carcinogenesis through exacerbating the functional decline of mitochondria thus reinforcing the Warburg effect.

The surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect on noble metals to convert solar energy into chemical has attracted a lot of interest. However, the lack of highly efficient photocatalysts is still the forbidden obstacle as well as their large-scale development. Therefore, we focus on plasmon resonance enhanced electrocatalytic oxidation of liquid fuel employing photocatalysts to develop unique hollow platinum-silver (Pt-Ag) nanocrystals. The hollow Pt-Ag is formed of nanodendrites (Pt1-Ag1) which display a great enhancement in catalytic activity towards ethylene glycol oxidation with the mass and specific activity found to be: 7045.2 mA/mg and 14.1 mA/cm2, respectively. This is due to: the SPR effect, efficient electronic distribution and synergistic properties, together with the unique hollow dendritic nanostructures. Impressively, the SPR effect also induces the optimum Pt-Ag nanocatalsyst under visible light irradiation conditions to display 1.7-fold enhancements in catalytic activity compared to that under dark conditions. In addition, 6.2 and 7.0-fold enhancements were obtained when the optimized Pt-Ag was employed as photoelectrocatalyst compared to the commercial Pt/C. Therefore, we present a unique catalyst which produces a high catalytic activity and long-term stability compared to those previously reported. More importantly, we also introduce a promising approach towards the designing of a plasmonic metal nanocatalyst with ideal nanostructures for liquid fuel oxidations.

A novel combined seed mediated and galvanic replacement method has been demonstrated to synthesize a new class of trimetallic PtAuAg nanocatalysts with highly open bowl-like nanocage structure. The newly-generated PtAuAg nanocages catalysts exhibit superior electrocatalytic performances towards ethylene glycol oxidation with the mass activity of 6357.1 mA mg−1, 5.5 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C (1151.1 mA mg−1). This work demonstrates the first example of designing shape-controlled architectures of trimetallic bowl-like PtAuAg nanocages for liquid fuel electrooxidation.

Engineering the architectures of metal nanocatalysts offers a valid approach for the development of electrocatalysts with greatly enhanced performances. Herein, we report the one-pot method to successfully fabricate the N-doped graphene (NG) supported dandelion-like PtRu nanocrystals. Such dandelion-like nanocrystals with different compositions can be readily tuned via the addition of different amounts of RuCl3. By virtue of the large accessible surface active areas, synergistic and electronic effect, as well as the successful introduction of NG, the as-obtained PtRu/NG with optimized compositions display outstandingly high electrocatalytic activity towards formic acid electrooxidation with the mass and specific activities of 1857.4 mA mg−1 and 18.3 mA cm−2, 6.3 and 3.3 times higher than those of commercial Pt/C, respectively. Moreover, the Pt1Ru1/NG can endure at least 500 cycles with less activity decay, showing a new class of Pt-based electrocatalysts with enhanced performance for fuel cells and beyond.

Although explosive investigations on boosting the practical large-scale commercialization of fuel cells have been carried out, the research on pursuing electrocatalysts with less cost, high activity, long lifetime remains a formidable challenge. Inspired by this, we herein demonstrate a facile wet-chemical route to create a novel class of N-doped graphene supported PtAu/Pt intermetallic core/dendritic shell nanocrystals for the first time. The resulted Pt1Au1/NG with intermetallic core and dendritic Pt shell combine both of the alloy and core-shell effects to expose more surface active areas and high-index facet, which exhibit excellent mass and specific activities (1847.1 mA mg−1 and 14.95 mA cm−2) towards formic acid oxidation reaction. More importantly, such Pt1Au1/NG nanocatalyst can endure 500 cycles with little activity decay, displaying a newly-generated N-doped graphene supported Pt-based nanocatalysts with enhanced performance for fuel cells and beyond.

The design of cost-efficient catalysts for the electrooxidation of liquid fuel is now highly desirable for the commercial application of direct fuel cells. In spired by this, we herein reported our tremendous efforts in the fabrication of core-shell PdAu convex nanospheres via a green method. Different from the previously reported PdAu core-shell nanostructures, the present PdAu convex nanospheres integrated the benefits of core/shell, many granular protuberances, alloy and electronic effect as well as high surface area. All of these favorable properties embody them to exhibit greatly enhanced electrocatalytic activity and long-term stability towards ethylene glycol oxidation as compared with commercial Pd/C. This work emphasizes the significance of shape-controlled of PdAu nanostructures over the electrocatalytic performances for the ethylene glycol oxidation.

Flower-like ZnO-Pt materials with three-dimensional architectures were synthesized by one-pot method, and a novel tannic acid (TA) analytical method based on flower-like ZnO-Pt modified glassy carbon electrode (ZnO-Pt/GCE) was also developed. Due to the introduction of metal Pt on ZnO, the as-prepared electrode exhibited good conductivity and gave rise to a significant increase in the photocurrent density under UV light illumination, confirming an enhanced charge transfer speed and a well combination between exited electron-hole pairs of ZnO. For the analysis of TA, differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) was applied to evaluate the photoelectrochemical performance on ZnO-Pt/GCE, and a wide linear range of 0.04–72.34 μM with a low detection limit of 0.02 μM (at S/N = 3) was obtained ultimately. The oxidation mechanism of tannic acid in different routes was also proposed and discussed. Moreover, the prepared electrode displayed high stability and selectivity toward the determination of tannic acid. These excellent results presented here make the ultraviolet assisted electrochemical determination a promising method in sensing.

Designing and tuning the bimetallic nanoparticles with desirable morphology and structure can embody them with greatly enhanced electrocatalytic activity and stability towards liquid fuel oxidation. We herein reported a facile one-pot method for the controlled synthesis of monodispersed binary PtAu nanoflowers with abundant exposed surface area. Owing to its fantastic structure, synergistic and electronic effect, such as-prepared PtAu nanoflowers exhibited outstandingly high electrocatalytic activity with the mass activity of 6482 mA mg−1 towards ethanol oxidation, which is 28.3 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C (227 mA mg−1). More interesting, the present PtAu nanoflower catalysts are more stable for the ethanol oxidation reaction in the alkaline with lower current density decay and retained a much higher current density after successive CVs of 500 cycles than that of commercial Pt/C. This work may open a new way for maximizing the catalytic performance of electrocatalysts towards ethanol oxidation by synthesizing shape-controlled alloy nanoparticles with more surface active sites to enhance the performances of direct fuel cells reaction, chemical conversion, and beyond.

Direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) among the cometabolism microbes plays a key role in the anaerobic degradation of persistent organic pollutants and stability of anaerobic bioreactor. In this study, the COD removal efficiency increased to 99.0% during the start-up stage in the combined bioelectrode-UASB system (R1) with magnetite nanoparticles addition, which was higher than those in the coupled bioelectrode-UASB (R2; 83.2%) and regular UASB (R3; 71.0%). During the stable stage, the increase of 2,4-dichloronitrobenzene (2,4-DClNB) concentration from 25 mg L−1 to 200 mg L−1 did not affect the COD removal efficiencies in R1 and R2, whereas the performance of R3 was deteriorated obviously. Further intermediates analysis indicated that magnetite nanoparticles enhanced the reductive dechlorination of 2,4-DClNB. High-throughput sequencing results showed that the functional microbes like Syntrophobacter and Syntrophomonas which have been reported to favor the DIET, were predominant on the cathode surface of R1 reactor. It is speculated that the addition of magnetite nanoparticles favors the cooperative metabolism of dechlorinating microbes and electricigens during 2,4-DClNB degradation process in the combined bioelectrode-UASB reactor. This study may provide a new strategy to improve the performance of microbial electrolysis cells and enhance the pollutant removal efficiency.

Tuning the morphology and compositions of catalyst is an effective method for promoting electrocatalytic intrinsic activity. However, many newly-generated nanocrystals with better nanostructures often have a large size, which enforces them to display extremely limited surface area and ultimately lead to the limited electrocatalytic activity. To break this bottleneck, we herein report a facile and reproducible wet-chemical method to control the synthesis of a class of ultra-uniform and small PdBi nanodots endowed with both high surface areas and tunable compositions. The presented PdBi nanodots show the ultrasmall size ( ca .2.5 nm) and great uniform dispersion property. These significant characteristics enable them to exhibit unprecedented electrocatalytic activities and durability toward formic acid oxidation. The mass activity and electrochemical surface active (ECSA) of prepared PdBi nanodots for the formic acid oxidation is 8.9/3.75 times higher than that of commercial Pd/C, respectively. We speculate that both of this facile synthetic approach and remarkable electrocatalytic performance of the obtained catalysts in this work illustrate that they can be applied as a promising catalyst for direct formic acid cells.

Solvents play a key role in controlling the fabrication and modification of nanoparticles. We herein demonstrated that the dispersibility, stability, morphology and structure of PdAu nanoparticles varied with the polarity, special functional groups and self-properties of solvents. The underlying causes for solvent dependence were attributed to the interactions between the solvent and PdAu nanoparticles coated with PVP. Additionally, in comparison with commercial Pd/C, the obtained PdAu nanowire networks prepared in different solvents exerted considerable high electrocatalytic activity and stability towards ethylene glycol and isopropanol electrooxidation, particular for the PdAu nanowire networks prepared in DMF, which exhibited the well-dispersed nanowire network structure with large quantity of surface active areas, superior electrocatalytic activity together with long-term stability. Our efforts not only highlighted the facile preparations of the effective PdAu nanowire networks for the potential anodic catalysts for the application of fuel cells, but also facilitated the selections of appropriate solvents for preparing valid catalysts.

Direct fuel cells are regarded as the most portable device for alleviating the problems of the energy dilemma and environmental disruption. Although direct fuel cells have a number of advantages, the lack of highly-efficient anode catalysts inhibits their wide application. To address this challenge, we report a facile one-pot method to fabricate a series of ultrathin platinum-cobalt (Pt-Co) nanowires with different proportions. The as-prepared catalysts all have one-dimensional ultrathin nanowire structures with high yields. Among all these catalysts, the ultrathin Pt89Co11 nanowires with optimized compositions, whose diameters are 1.8 nm on average, show the best catalytic activity for the glycerol oxidation reaction in alkaline conditions, and their mass and specific activities reach 4573.0 mA mg−1 and 11.9 mA cm−2, which are 5.4 and 3.6 times higher than those of commercial Pt/C catalysts, respectively. The as-obtained Pt89Co11 nanowires are also the most durable nanowires according to long-term stability tests. This method may provide guidelines for the preparation of other Pt-based bimetallic nanowires, which could somewhat accelerate the development and commercialization of catalysts for fuel cells.

Patients with Non‐Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) treated by conventional chemotherapeutic drugs usually require a long recovery period. However, metronomic combination chemotherapy (MCC) enhances therapeutic efficacy and decreases side effects in the treatment of NHL. In this study, we tested and compared the effects of metronomic chemotherapy (MC) using podophyllotoxin derivative etoposide (VP‐16) alone and that of MCC using both VP‐16 and everolimus (RAD001) in the treatment of NHL. Two types of NHL cells, OCI‐LY‐10 and SU‐DHL‐6, were employed for the experiments. Cell proliferation, apoptosis, and cell senescence were measured to test the effects of drugs in each experiment. In addition, the influences of MC and MCC on the cell cycle and autophagy pathway were evaluated to study the functional mechanisms behind their effects. Finally, we conducted analyses of the growth inhibitory effect and synergistic activity for different MCC. The results showed that MC using low‐dose VP‐16 alone demonstrated strong treatment effects in terms of inducing apoptosis, cell senescence, and reducing tumor cell proliferation, and this treatment also led to changes of the cell cycle. Compared with MC, MCC using VP‐16 and RAD001 together demonstrated even stronger treatment effects, with both the cell cycle and autophagy‐related proteins being affected. Considering the synergistic activity, our results showed the MCC of VP‐16 48 hours + RAD001 24 hours is the optimal method for treating NHL.

Extremely stable and biocompatible 3D magnetically responsive photonic crystals (MRPCs) are successfully prepared in aqueous solution. Classic hydrothermal synthesis was applied for preparation of the Fe3O4@C core. Modified Stober method was then employed for synthesis of the different size of Fe3O4@C@SiO2. Unlike the traditional magnetic nanoparticles, the highly negative charged superparamagnetic nanospheres (SMNs), i.e., the double-shell structure Fe3O4@C@SiO2 are capable of rapidly self-assembling into 3D MRPCs with full visible and various colors that can be periodically and reversibly tuned under different kinds of external magnetic fields (EMFs) within 1 s. The assembling behavior and mechanism of the 3D MRPCs under EMF were monitored and analyzed. The preparation is simple and the size of the SMN is easily controllable by adjusting the amount of catalyst. Compared with the previous works, the synthesized 3D MRPCs are hydrophilic, and exhibit extremely high stability after 6-month storage. To conclude, our study provides an effective two-step strategy for fabrication of biocompatible 3D MRPCs and it reveals great potentials in biological fields.

In the present study, a bioelectrochemical system (BES) was developed for 2,4-dichloronitrobenzene (DClNB) transformation. Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize the operational conditions, including the V/S ratio (volume of the BES/size of the electrode ratio), interval (D) (distance between the anode and cathode) and position (P) (proportion of the electrodes immerged in the sludge). The optimum conditions for the V/S ratio, interval and position were 40, 2.31 cm and 0.42. The pollutant removal rate and increase in Cl− were 1.819 ± 0.037 mg L−1 h−1 and 11.894 ± 0.180 mg L−1, which were close to the predicted values (1.908 mg L−1 h−1 and 12.485 mg L−1). A continuous experiment indicated that the pollutant removal efficiency in the BES with 50% of the electrodes immerged in the sludge was 34.6% and 22.6% higher than that in the ones with 0 and 100% of the electrodes immerged in the sludge.

BackgroundImmune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) induce better tumor regression in melanoma with programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) high expression, but there has been an upsurge of failed responses. In this study, we aimed to explore the additional mechanisms possibly accounting for ICIs resistance and interventional strategies to overcome the resistance in melanoma with PD-L1 high expression.MethodsMelanoma xenografts and cytotoxicity assays were used to investigate function of SOX2 in regulating antitumor immunity. The activity of the janus kinase-signal transducer and activator of transcriptions (JAK-STAT) pathway was investigated by western blots, quantitative PCR and luciferase assay. Epigenetic compounds library screen was employed to identify inhibitors that could decrease SOX2 level. The effect of histone deacetylase inhibitor SAHA in antitumor immunity alone or in combination with immunotherapy was also determined in vitro and in vivo. Prognostic impact of SOX2 was analyzed using transcriptional profiles and clinical data download from the Gene Expression Omnibus and The Cancer Genome Atlas repository.ResultsWe uncovered a role of SOX2 in attenuating the sensitivity of melanoma cells to CD8+ T-cell killing. Mechanistically, SOX2 inhibited phosphatases suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3) and protein tyrosine phosphatase non-receptor type 1 (PTPN1) transcription, induced duration activation of the JAK-STAT pathway and thereby overexpression of interferon stimulated genes resistance signature (ISG.RS). By targeting the SOX2-JAK-STAT signaling, SAHA promoted the antitumor efficacy of IFNγ or anti-PD-1 in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, SOX2 was an independent prognostic factor for poor survival and resistant to anti-PD-1 therapy in melanoma with PD-L1 high expression.ConclusionsOur data unveiled an additional function of SOX2 causing immune evasion of CD8+ T-cell killing through alleviating the JAK-STAT pathway and ISG.RS expression. We also provided a rationale to explore a novel combination of ICIs with SAHA clinically, especially in melanoma with PD-L1 and SOX2 high expression.