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Despite its great potential in cancer therapy, phototherapy, including photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT), often cause metastasis of tumors. Immunotherapy has revolutionized the cancer treatment owing to the capability of activating immune system to eliminate tumors. However, the integration of phototherapy and immunotherapy in a single nanoagent for cancer therapy is still a challenging task. Here, we fabricated (Cu9S5@mSiO2-PpIX@MnO2@CpG (CSPM@CpG)) as a synergistic therapeutic model for phototherapy enhanced immunotherapy. The intracellular uptake of cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) promoted the infiltration of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in tumor tissue, further stimulating the production of interferon gamma (IFN-γ) and remarkably elevating the immune response level. Excellent anti-tumor effects have been achieved by synergistic PTT/PDT/immunotherapy. The metastasis of tumors was effectively inhibited by the immune response of CpG. Thus, our proposed work provides a strategy to combine phototherapy with immunotherapy to enhance the therapeutic efficiency and further inhibit metastasis of tumors. CpG oligonucleotides can stimulate an anticancer immune response. Zhou et al. now develop nanoparticles that can deliver CpG, which promotes cancer cell death after photothermal and photodynamic therapy in vitro and in vivo, concomitant with an immunological response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vinylated polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS-M) was prepared by the reaction of POSS containing amine groups with acrylic acid. Azobenzene liquid crystalline copolymer (LCP-POSS) was then synthesized with 6.0 mol% POSS-M and 94.0 mol% acrylate monomer containing azobenzene liquid crystalline moiety (Azo-M) by free-radical copolymerization. Homopolymer of Azo-M (LCP) was also synthesized under the same conditions. Their thermal properties and liquid crystallinity were characterized by Thermal gravimetric analysis (TG), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Wide-angle X-ray diffraction experiments (XRD) and polarized optical micrographs (POM). The results showed that LCP-POSS has higher thermal stability and glass transition temperature than pure LCP due to the incorporation of the rigid cage-like POSS. Especially, LCP-POSS exhibits enantiotropic smectic and nematic liquid crystalline behaviors, its smectic-nematic transition temperature ( T) and nematic-isotropic transition temperature ( T) are higher than those of pure LCP, which may promote and extend its applications on stimuli-responsive materials and devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activation of protein C plays an important role in modulating coagulation as well as inflammation during severe sepsis. The baseline of activated protein C level in patients with severe sepsis showed interindividual variability between survivors and nonsurvivors, and the decreased level of protein C correlated with organ dysfunction and poor outcome. However, there are limited data concerning the genetic predisposition of individuals carrying two functional polymorphisms -1641A>G and -1654C>T within protein C gene to sepsis. Here we investigated the impact of these two variations on the development of severe sepsis in 240 patients with severe sepsis and 323 healthy controls using direct sequencing. After Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons, -1641A/-1654C haplotype was significantly associated with the fatal outcome of severe sepsis ( P = 0.008, OR 1.739, 95% CI 1.165–2.595), which was confirmed by multiple logistic regression analysis ( P = 0.024, OR 2.090, 95% CI 1.101–3.967). Compared to patients without carrying -1641A/-1654C haplotype, the -1641A/-1654C haplotype carriers showed higher SOFAmax scores (10.3 ± 5.2 vs. 9.0 ± 4.5; P = 0.014) and more hepatic dysfunction ( P = 0.004, OR 2.270, 95% CI 1.312–3.930). These findings suggest that protein C haplotype -1641A/-1654C is associated with organ dysfunction and is an independent risk factor for the fatal outcome of severe sepsis in Chinese Han population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]