Search

Emerging pollutants (EPs) are chemical substances that are commonly not regulated and can be detected at low or very low concentrations. However, EPs have triggered special concern because their long-term adverse effects on the environment and human health remain unknown. Most EPs show biological toxicity, environmental persistence, and bioaccumulation. Even at low concentrations in the environment, EPs may pose significant environmental and health risks. Therefore, their treatment has been explicitly included in the 14th Five Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the Outline of the Long-term Goals for 2035. Soil is a source of pollutants, and its quality is directly related to economic development, ecological security, and people's livelihood. At present, China's soil environmental monitoring system is not perfect, and the ability to monitor these new organic pollutants is lagging. Therefore, to strengthen the supervision of construction and agricultural land soil environments, it is essential to strengthen the soil environment monitoring ability for these EPs and establish a reliable, steady, and economic analysis method, including their separation and analysis methods in soil. Polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs) have received considerable attention as emerging halogenated compounds. They were listed in Annexes A and C of the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in 2015 because of their persistence, multimedia fate, and toxicity. PCNs have now been detected in the surrounding soils. Owing to their trace levels in complex soil, high requirements have been put forward for the pretreatment and instrument analysis of PCNs. This study aims to develop a new method for the selective purification of PCNs in soil, which can not only effectively remove lipids and other interferences in soil but also effectively reduce time, labor, and material costs in the pre-treatment process. Based on the physicochemical properties of the 13X molecular sieve, it was explored to purify soil-extracts as solid-phase extraction (SPE) sorbents. With n-hexane as the loading and rinsing solvent, 10 mL of a dichloromethane/n-hexane mixture (2∶15, v/v) was used to elute the PCNs. Moreover, selective separation of target substances from lipid macromolecules and other interferences could be achieved simultaneously. For the selective separation of PCNs, the average recovery of the internal standard could reach 56.1% to 88.0%. 13X molecular sieves are superior to gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and Florisil SPE, and they exhibit good cleanup efficiency similar to a multilayer silica gel/alumina column (53.0%-117.0%). Although the obtained recoveries are not as high as those obtained with a multilayer silica gel/alumina column, 13X molecular sieves have advantages in terms of simple operation, environmental friendliness, and low cost. Based on these fundamental experiments, accelerated solvent extraction was used to extract targets in soil, molecular sieves were used as SPE sorbents for purification, and GC-MS/MS was employed for PCN analysis. This method was developed as a systematic analytical method for PCNs determination. The method detection limits (MDLs) for PCN homologs were in the range of 0.009-0.6 ng/g. The precision and accuracy of the method were evaluated using spiked matrices. At three spiked levels (4, 10, and 18 ng), the recoveries of PCNs (CN-3, 13, 42, 46, 52, 53, 73, and 75) were 70%-128%, 71%-115%, and 61%-114%, respectively, and the corresponding relative standard derivations were 4.2%-23%, 6.5%-31% and 4.7%-22%. Thus, this method meets the requirements of trace analysis and shows acceptable parallelism, sensitivity, accuracy, and precision, thus being feasible for the analysis of emerging pollutant. The method is expected to play an important role in sample pretreatment in the future, especially for the nationwide investigation of soil pollution.

Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT) followed by surgery is recommended for locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) treatment. Patients who achieve a pathological complete response (pCR) have better survival. Our study aimed to discover immune-associated predictors of pCR in ESCC. Herein, we found that Th1-cell infiltration inferred from RNA sequencing was higher in the pCR group than in the non-pCR group. Multiplexed immunohistochemistry (mIHC) confirmed that Th1-, CD8

The authors have requested that this preprint be removed from Research Square.

Urachal carcinoma (UrC) is an exceedingly rare tumor and lacks effective treatment. Herein, we characterized an immune microenvironment characteristic of UrC in detail and identified its implications for prognosis and immunotherapy. In total, 37 resections of UrC were stained for CD20, CD3, CD4, CD8, FOXP3, CD68, HLA-DR, CD163, PD1, and PD-L1, as well as mismatch repair protein including MSH2, MSH6, MLH1, and PMS2 by immunohistochemistry. Intratumoral and peritumoral immune cell densities or the proportion of PD1 and PD-L1 expression alongside MSH2, MSH6, MLH1, and PMS2 status were manually evaluated using the whole slide. UrC patients with the number of tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) per slide tended to be higher in tumors with dMMR (p = 0.1919), and tumors with higher number of TLS tended to have longer OS (p = 0.0940) and DFS (p = 0.0700). High densities of CD3+ T, CD8+ T, and CD68+ cells were significantly associated with worse OS and DFS (both pp = 0.0111) and peritumoral (p = 0.0485) CD8+ T cell densities were significantly associated with PD-L1 expression or increasing proportion of PD-L1 expression on immune cells. Similarly, increased intratumoral (p = 0.0008) and peritumoral (p = 0.063) CD8+ T cell densities were significantly associated with increasing proportion of PD1 expression on immune cells. Tumors with PD-L1 positive expression on immune cells had a significantly increased proportion of PD1 expression (p = 0.0121). High peritumoral CD8+ T cell density (>73.7/mm2) was significantly associated with worse OS (p = 0.0120) and DFS (p = 0.00095). The number of TLS seems to be considered not only as histopathological characteristics in predicting MMR status of UrC, but also as a prognostic or therapeutic biomarker, and we also provide some important suggestions for targeting PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint in UrC.

Fabrication of Z-scheme heterojunctions and crystal facet engineering are effective strategies for enhancing visible-light photocatalytic redox ability. Visible-light-responsive Z-scheme reduced graphene oxide (rGO)/Bi2S3–BiOBr heterojunctions with a tunable exposed BiOBr (102) facet and high stability were prepared by a one-pot solvothermal strategy. A graphene oxide (GO) solution acts as a rGO precursor and crystal facet controlling agent of BiOBr (102). The optimized 1% rGO/Bi2S3–BiOBr catalyst shows a much higher photocatalytic activity in degrading a single-component 2-nitrophenol (2NP) solution and a reducing single-component Cr(VI) solution than Bi2S3, BiOBr and Bi2S3–BiOBr. In the mixture solution of 2NP and Cr(VI), 2NP degradation and Cr(VI) reduction occur simultaneously, and the Cr(VI) reduction efficiency and 2NP degradation efficiency reached 95% and 67%, respectively. The synergism of rGO/Bi2S3–BiOBr for simultaneous 2NP degradation and Cr(VI) reduction can be attributed to the efficient production of electrons and reactive oxygen species. This work sheds light on the design of facet-dependent Z-scheme photocatalysts to advance photocatalytic redox capability.

Background Immunotherapy is effective in treating unresectable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), but little is known about its role in the preoperative setting. The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety, feasibility and efficacy of neoadjuvant treatment with camrelizumab plus chemotherapy in locally advanced ESCC. Methods Patients diagnosed with locally advanced ESCC were retrospectively included if they had received neoadjuvant camrelizumab plus nab-paclitaxel and S1 capsule followed by radical esophagectomy between November, 2019 and June, 2020 at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. Primary endpoints were safety and feasibility. In addition, pathological response and the relationship between tumor immune microenvironment (TIME)/tumor mutational burden (TMB) and treatment response were also investigated. Results Twelve patients were included and they all received three courses of preoperative treatment with camrelizumab plus nab-paclitaxel/S1. No grade 3 or higher toxicities occurred. No surgical delay or perioperative death was reported. Nine patients (75%) responded to the treatment, four with a complete pathological response (pCR) and five with a major pathological response (MPR). Neither programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression nor TMB was correlated with treatment response. TIME analysis revealed that a higher abundance of CD56dim natural killer cells was associated with better pathological response in the primary tumor, while lower density of M2-tumor-associated macrophages was associated with better pathological response in the lymph nodes (LNs). Conclusions Neoadjuvant camrelizumab plus nab-paclitaxel and S1 is safe, feasible and effective in locally advanced ESCC and is worth further investigation.

Background: Immunotherapy is effective in treating unresectable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), but little is known about its activities in the preoperative setting. We aimed to evaluate the safety, feasibility and efficacy of neoadjuvant treatment with camrelizumab plus chemotherapy in locally advanced ESCC. Methods: Patients diagnosed with locally advanced ESCC were retrospectively included if they had received three courses of neoadjuvant camrelizumab plus nab-paclitaxel and S1 capsule followed by radical esophagectomy between November, 2019 and June, 2020 at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. Primary endpoints were safety and feasibility. Pathological response and association between tumor immune microenvironment (TIME)/tumor mutational burden (TMB) and treatment response were also explored. Results: Twelve patients were included. Neoadjuvant treatment with camrelizumab plus nab-paclitaxel/S1 was well tolerated without any grade 3 or higher toxicities. No surgical delay or perioperative death was reported. Nine patients (75%) responded to the treatment, four with a complete pathological response and five with a major pathological response. Treatment response by radiography was discordant with surgical pathology for five cases while endoscopic ultrasonography was accurate for the entire cohort. Neither programmed death-ligand 1 expression nor TMB was correlated with treatment response. In the TIME, higher abundance of CD56dim natural killer cells was associated with better pathological response in the primary tumor while lower density of M2-tumor-associated macrophages was associated with better pathological response in the lymph nodes. Conclusions: Neoadjuvant camrelizumab plus nab-paclitaxel and S1 is safe, feasible and effective in locally advanced ESCC and is worth further investigation. Citation Format: Guozhen Yang, Xiaodong Su, Hong Yang, Guangyu Luo, Chan Gao, Yating Zheng, Wenzhuan Xie, Mengli Huang, Yuezong Bai, Zhiqiang Wang, Peiqiang Cai, Haoqiang He, Jin Xiang, Muyuan Cai, Yijun Zhang, Chunhua Qu, Jianhua Fu, Qianwen Liu, Yi Hu, Jiudi Zhong, Yuanheng Huang, Qiyu Guo, Xu Zhang. Neoadjuvant programmed death-1 blockade plus chemotherapy in locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021; 2021 Apr 10-15 and May 17-21. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(13_Suppl):Abstract nr 1601.