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Micro/nanomotors (MNMs) are small-scale devices that can effectively convert various forms of energy into mechanical motion. Their controllable motility and good permeability have attracted the interest of researchers as promising drug carriers in cancer therapy. Compared with traditional formulations, micro/nanomotor drug delivery systems can greatly improve therapeutic efficiency and reduce the side effects of antitumor drugs. This review mainly discusses the advantages of micro/nanomotor drug delivery systems and the applications of MNMs propelled by exogenous, endogenous, and biohybrid power in cancer therapy. Finally, the main challenges of the applications of micro/nanomotor drug delivery systems, as well as future development trends and opportunities are discussed.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the associations between changes in blood pressure (BP) and cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD). Methods: This study included 401 participants in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sub-study conducted between 2018 and 2020 as a part of the Multidomain Interventions to Delay Dementia and Disability in Rural China project. MRI markers of CSVD were assessed based on international criteria. Individualized linear regression models evaluated changes in BP by estimating the trend of blood pressure changes over time and fitting a straight line from 2014 to 2018. The data were analyzed using logistic and general linear regression models. Result: The mean age of the participants was 64.48 ± 2.69 years, with 237 (59.1%) being females. Increases in systolic BP in later life were significantly associated with larger volumes of periventricular white matter hyperintensity (WMH), greater perivascular spaces in the basal ganglia (BG-PVS) burden, and the presence of deep lacunes and cerebral microbleeds. Additionally, increases in diastolic BP in later life were significantly associated with the presence of infratentorial and deep lacunes. Conclusions: CSVDs are associated with increased exposure to elevated BP later in life.

‘Huabai 1’ is a novel albino tea germplasm that has a stable albino phenotype and prolonged albino period. In this study, widely targeted metabolomics was employed to analyze the metabolic profile of ‘Huabai 1’, and compare metabolites between albino shoots of ‘Huabai 1’ (HBW) and albino shoots of the broadest cultivated cultivar ‘Baiye 1’ (BYW). A total of 359 differential metabolites were identified in ‘Huabai 1’. Comparative analysis of differential metabolites revealed that 83 and 161 differential metabolites were specific for HBW and BYW, respectively. The phenylpropanoid and flavonoids biosynthesis are the key metabolic pathways, contributing to the color change in ‘Huabai 1’, while the purine metabolism and lipid-related metabolites may play important roles in regulating albinism in ‘Baiye 1’. Comparative analysis of amino acids and catechins revealed that the umami taste of albino tea may be due to the internal balance of amino acid components and the decrease in phenol-ammonia ratio. In addition, lipid-related metabolites, the main contributors to the aroma of tea, were significantly enriched in BYW, while, HBW possess higher antioxidative components than that of BYW, such as apigenin and genistein etc., suggesting that the ‘Huabai 1’ may have high prospects in commercialization and future breeding programs.

Manipulating light transmission by shading is the most effective method of improving the nutritional value and sensory qualities of tea. In this study, the metabolic profiling of two tea cultivars (“Yulv” and “Maotouzhong”) in response to different shading periods during the summer season was performed using ultraperformance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The metabolic pathway analyses showed that the glycolytic pathway and the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA cycle) in the leaves and shoots of “Maotouzhong” were significantly inhibited by long-term shading. The nitrogen metabolism in the leaves of the two cultivars was promoted by short-term shading, while it was inhibited by long-term shading. However, the nitrogen metabolism in the shoots of the two cultivars was always inhibited by shading, whether for short or long-term periods. In addition, the intensity of the flavonoid metabolism in both tea cultivars could be reduced by shading. These results revealed that shading could regulate the carbon and nitrogen metabolism and short-term shading could improve the tea quality to some extent.

Liver fibrosis (LF) is a pathological repair reaction caused by a chronic liver injury that affects the health of millions of people worldwide, progressing to life-threatening cirrhosis and liver cancer without timely intervention. Due to the complexity of LF pathology, multiple etiological characteristics, and the deposited extracellular matrix, traditional drugs cannot reach appropriate targets in a time-space matching way, thus decreasing the therapeutic effect. Nanoparticle drug delivery systems (NDDS) enable multidrug co-therapy and develop multifactor delivery strategies targeting pathological processes, showing great potential in LF therapy. Based on the pathogenesis and the current clinical treatment status of LF, we systematically elucidate the targeting mechanism of NDDS used in the treatment of LF. Subsequently, we focus on the progress of drug delivery applications for LF, including combined delivery for the liver fibrotic pathological environment, overcoming biological barriers, precise intracellular regulation, and intelligent responsive delivery for the liver fibrotic microenvironment. We hope that this review will inspire the rational design of NDDS for LF in the future in order to provide ideas and methods for promoting LF regression and cure.

The physiological structure and the drug delivery barriers of lymph nodes were described.The factors affecting lymph nodes accumulation in nano-delivery systems were discussed.The recent progress of nano-delivery carriers applied for lymph nodes immunotherapy was further categorized and reviewed.

Mild photothermal therapy (PTT) kills tumors at low temperatures (<45 °C) with less non-specific thermal diffusion through adjacent normal tissues, making it a promising antitumor strategy. Although mild PTT can directly convert light energy into heat to kill tumors and indirectly induce immune cell death to prime the immune response, it simultaneously induces negative regulatory factors in the body to resist antitumor functions. In particular, the direct killing effects were reversed by the upregulation of heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) induced by mild PTT. The antitumor effects of T-cell-based immunotherapy counter indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase1 (IDO1)-catalyzed kynurenine accumulation. Current studies have mainly focused on promoting direct killing effects or utilizing the priming immune response to strengthen the immunotherapy of mild PTT. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate whether the simultaneous promotion of direct killing and indirect immune activation would synergistically maximize mild PTT efficacy. This study reports on the development of a tumor-targeting nanoelicitor, α-MSH-GA/IR780/1-MT-Liposome (M-GIM-Lip), by co-loading the photothermal agent IR780, HSP90 inhibitor geldanamycin, and IDO1 inhibitor 1-MT into liposomes with a melanoma-specific target ligand α-MSH modification. After accumulating in the tumor, the M-GIM-Lip could significantly inhibit tumor progress by combinate blockage of HSP90 and IDO1 pathways at 41 °C treatment of mild PTT. The study offers an innovative co-regulation strategy for enhancing the antitumor effects of mild PTT.

In this project, quinoline and quinolone-containing hydrazide compounds were designed and synthesized by introducing a bioactive hydrazide group into the skeleton of waltherione F. The fungicidal activity revealed that some hydrazide compounds exhibited excellent and broad-spectrum fungicidal activity; especially, compounds E8, E12, and E16showed more than 90% or even 100% inhibition rates against most pathogens at 50 μg·mL–1. The fungicidal mechanism indicated that compound E8may affect the normal function of the plasma membrane, further generating changes in the morphology and subcellular structure of mycelia. Simultaneously, Fusarium graminearummay resist the E8-treated stress through the metabolic pathways related to l-glutamate, l-glutamine, and glutathione. Finally, the effect of compound E8on wheat seedling’s growth and the toxicity to zebrafish were accomplished. These results will provide important guidance to discover novel fungicidal lead compounds and explore new targets, which are effective ways to alleviate the increasingly severe drug resistance.

Additively manufactured elastically isotropic lattice structures are promising for lightweight structural applications. Current design methods for elastically isotropic lattice structures are mostly based on the assumption of isotropic constitutive materials. However, additive manufacturing (AM) fabricated materials generally exhibit undesired anisotropy due to the layer-by-layer construction, which requires precise material models to be incorporated in structural design framework. This work presents a design method of variable thickness triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) shell lattices to achieve elastic isotropy from homogeneous anisotropic constitutive materials. A gradient-based optimization method which adopts the universal anisotropy index as the objective is developed to handle any orthotropic lattices, extending the widely used method based on the Zener anisotropy ratio that only suits cubic lattices. To validate the proposed design method, the transversely isotropic elasticity model of micro laser powder bed fusion (μLPBF) fabricated stainless steel 316 L (SS316L) is calibrated through tensile tests, and then incorporated into the optimization method to design elastically isotropic variable thickness N14, IWP, and P shell lattices. Compression tests results of μLPBF fabricated N14 lattices demonstrate that the proposed design reduces the relative standard deviation of the lattice’s Young’s moduli along nine directions from 0.77 (uniform thickness) to 0.75. Further numerical analysis reveals that the Young’s moduli of N14, IWP and P shell lattices along [001] direction are reduced by 2%−6% depending on the lattice type, while those along [100] and [101] directions remain almost constant after anisotropic SS316L (Ez/Ex= 0.92) replaces the isotropic one. This work provides a design and analysis method for AM fabricated TPMS shell lattices made of anisotropic constitutive materials, and reveals the influences of anisotropic constitutive materials on the elastic properties of lattices.

Triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) shell lattices are attracting increasingly attention due to their unique combination of geometric and mechanical properties, and their open-cell topology. However, uniform thickness TPMS shell lattices are usually anisotropic in stiffness, namely having different Young’s moduli along different lattice directions. To reduce the elastic anisotropy, we propose a family of variable thickness TPMS shell lattices with isotropic stiffness designed by a strain energy-based optimization algorithm. The optimization results show that all the six selected types of TPMS lattices can be made to achieve isotropic stiffness by varying the shell thickness, among which N14 can maintain over 90% of the Hashin-Shtrikman upper bound of bulk modulus. All the optimized shell lattices exhibit superior stiffness properties and significantly outperform elastically-isotropic truss lattices of equal relative densities. Both uniform and optimized types of N14 shell lattices along [100], [110] and [111] directions are fabricated by the micro laser powder bed fusion techniques with stainless steel 316 L and tested under quasi-static compression loads. Experimental results show that the elastic anisotropy of the optimized N14 lattices is reduced compared to that of the uniform ones. Large deformation compression results reveal different failure deformation behaviors along different directions. The [100] direction shows a layer-by-layer plastic buckling failure mode, while the failures along [110] and [111] directions are related to the shear deformation. The optimized N14 lattices possess a reduced anisotropy of plateau stresses and can even attain nearly isotropic energy absorption capacity.

Albinism in shoots of tea plants is a common phenotypic expression which gives the tea infusion a pleasant umami taste. A novel natural albino mutant tea germplasm containing high amino acids content was found and named as ‘Huabai 1’. ‘Huabai 1’ has white jade tender shoots under low temperature and turns green with increased temperature. In order to understand the molecular mechanism of color change in leaf of ‘Huabai 1’, transcriptome analysis was performed to identify albino-associated differentially expressed genes (DEGs). A total of 483 DEGs were identified from white shoots of ‘Huabai 1’ compared to its green shoots. There were 15 DEGs identified to be involved in phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, which account for the majority of characterized DEGs. The metabolites related to phenylpropanoid biosynthesis revealed similar expression pattern of DEGs. Furthermore, metabolic pathways such as ubiquonone, tyrosine, and flavonoid biosynthesis associated with phenylpropanoid biosynthesis could also contribute to the color change in ‘Huabai 1’ tender shoots. Protein–protein interaction analysis revealed a hub protein NEDD8 (CSA009575) which interacted with many regulated genes in spliceosome, nitrogen metabolism, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and other pathways. In conclusion, the findings in this study indicate that the color change of ‘Huabai 1’ tender shoots is a combined effect of phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway and other metabolic pathways including flavonoid biosynthesis in tea plants. Chlorophyll biosynthesis-related genes LHCII and SGR may also play some roles in color change of ‘Huabai 1’.

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