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Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising cancer treatment option in recent years. In immune “hot” tumors, characterized by abundant immune cell infiltration, immunotherapy can improve patients’ prognosis by activating the function of immune cells. By contrast, immune “cold” tumors are often less sensitive to immunotherapy owing to low immunogenicity of tumor cells, an immune inhibitory tumor microenvironment, and a series of immune-escape mechanisms. Immunogenic cell death (ICD) is a promising cellular process to facilitate the transformation of immune “cold” tumors to immune “hot” tumors by eliciting innate and adaptive immune responses through the release of (or exposure to) damage-related molecular patterns. Accumulating evidence suggests that various traditional therapies can induce ICD, including chemotherapy, targeted therapy, radiotherapy, and photodynamic therapy. In this review, we summarize the biological mechanisms and hallmarks of ICD and introduce some newly discovered and technologically innovative inducers that activate the immune system at the molecular level. Furthermore, we also discuss the clinical applications of combing ICD inducers with cancer immunotherapy. This review will provide valuable insights into the future development of ICD-related combination therapeutics and potential management for “cold” tumors.

Resistant starch (RS) can help prevent diabetes and decrease calorie intake and that from plants are the main source of mankind consumption. Rice is many people’s staple food and that with higher RS will help health management. A significantly positive correlation exists between apparent amylose content (AAC) of rice and its RS content. In this study, 72 accessions with moderate or high AAC were selected to explore the regulatory mechanisms and physicochemical properties on different proceeding types of rice RS. RS in raw milled rice (RSm), hot cooked rice (RSc), and retrogradation rice (RSr) showed a wide variation and distinct controlling mechanisms. They were co-regulated by Waxy (Wx), soluble starch synthase (SS) IIb and SSI. Besides that, RSm was also regulated by SSIIa and SSIVb, RSc by granule-bound starch synthase (GBSS) II and RSr by GBSSII and Pullulanase (PUL). Moreover, Wx had significant interactions with SSIIa, SSI, SSIIb and SSIVb on RSm, but only the dominant interactions with SSIIb and SSI on RSc and RSr. Wx was the key factor for the formation of RS, especially the RSc and RSr. The genes had the highest expression at 17 days after flowering and were beneficial for RS formation. The longer the chain length of starch, the higher the RS3 content. RSc and RSr were likely to be contained in medium-size starch granules. The findings favor understanding the biosynthesis of different subtypes of RS.

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as cyclooxygenase (Cox)-1/2 inhibitor, have emerged as potent antipyretics and analgesics. However, few herbs with Cox-1/2 inhibitory activity are commonly used for heat-clearing in China. Although these are known to have antipyretic activity, there is a lack of molecular data supporting their activity. Using the traditional Chinese medicine herb honeysuckle (Hon) as an example, we explored key antipyretic active compounds and their mechanisms of action by assessing their metabolites and metabolomics. Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) 3 and protein kinase B (AKT) 1 were suggested as key targets regulated primarily by chlorogenic acid (CA) and swertiamarin (SWE). CA and SWE synergistically inhibited the production of interleukin (IL)-1 and IL-6, alleviated generation of prostaglandin E2, and played an antipyretic role equivalent to honeysuckle extract at the same dose contents within 3 h. Collectively, these findings indicated that lipopolysaccharide-induced fever can be countered by CA with SWE synergistically, allowing the substitution of a crude extract of complex composition with active compounds. Our findings demonstrated that, unlike the traditional NSAIDs, the Hon extract showed a remote and indirect mechanism for alleviating fever that depended on the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase–AKT and MAPK pathways by regulating the principal mediator of inflammation.

The micro-electro-mechanical system is widely used for energy harvesting and thermal wind sensor, its efficiency and reliability depend upon the pull-in instability. This paper studies a micro-electro-mechanical system using He-Liu [34] formulation for finding its frequency-amplitude relationship. The system periodic motion, pull-in instability and pseudo-periodic motion are discussed. This paper offers a new window for security monitoring of the system reliable operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]