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Osteoarthritis (OA) is characterized by an imbalance between M1 and M2 polarized synovial macrophages. Quercetin has shown protective effects against OA by altering M1/M2‐polarized macrophages, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, rat chondrocytes were treated with 10 ng/mL of IL‐1β. To create M1‐polarized macrophages in vitro, rat bone marrow‐derived macrophages (rBMDMs) were treated with 100 ng/mL LPS. To mimic OA conditions observed in vivo, a co‐culture system of chondrocytes and macrophages was established. ATP release assays, immunofluorescence assays, Fluo‐4 AM staining, Transwell assays, ELISA assays, and flow cytometry were performed. Male adult Sprague–Dawley (SD) rats were used to create an OA model. Histological analyses, including H&E, and safranin O‐fast green staining were performed. Our data showed a quercetin‐mediated suppression of calcium ion influx and ATP release, with concurrent downregulation of TRPV1 and P2X7 in the chondrocytes treated with IL‐1β. Activation of TRPV1 abolished the quercetin‐mediated effects on calcium ion influx and ATP release in chondrocytes treated with IL‐1β. In the co‐culture system, overexpression of P2X7 in macrophages attenuated the quercetin‐mediated effects on M1 polarization, migration, and inflammation. Either P2X7 or NLRP3 knockdown attenuated IL‐1β‐induced M1/M2 polarization, migration, and inflammation. Moreover, overexpression of TRPV1 reduced the quercetin‐mediated suppressive effects on OA by promoting M1/M2‐polarized macrophages in vivo. Collectively, our data showed that quercetin‐induced suppression of TRPV1 leads to a delay in OA progression by shifting the macrophage polarization from M1 to M2 subtypes via modulation of the P2X7/NLRP3 pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The maintenance and strategy operation after patent licensing can bring great market competitiveness and benefits to enterprises. But the large time span from patent licensing to market application makes it challenging to discern the benefits of patent competition strategy. Besides, artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging industry without ready-to-use experience to formulate patent competition strategy, and particularly current researches have not designed patent competition strategy from the micro patent management perspective of AI enterprises to solve the uncertainty caused by the lag of market application relative to patent licensing. This research builds an expert group discriminant system based on the system dynamics method to address this problem. It integrates expert tacit knowledge to determine the fuzzy variable value and the fuzzy relationship. The patent competition strategy subsystem in national dimension, industry dimension and enterprise dimension for capturing the market from the perspective of enterprise technology competitiveness are constructed. By combining the three subsystems, the enterprise patent competition strategy system dynamics model with evolution analysis is established. Finally, taking typical Chinese AI enterprise iFLYTEK as an example, the multi-scenario simulation is carried out and the results under four different scenarios can provide effective decision supports for managers to formulate reasonable patent competition strategy and gain high market share. This research sheds light on modeling and evolution analysis of the patent competition strategy which comprehensively and systematically considers the operation mechanism of patent management and contributes to dealing with the uncertainty and ambiguity in the system dynamics model effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]