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Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common malignant tumor, and it is characterized by high cellular proliferation and invasion in the central nervous system of adults. Due to its high degree of heterogeneity and mortality, there is no effective therapy for GBM. In our study, we investigated the effect of the p38-MAPK signaling pathway inhibitor BIRB796 on GBM cells. Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay, 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EDU) staining, and cell cycle distribution analysis were performed, and the results showed that BIRB796 decreased proliferation in U87 and U251 cells. Moreover, wound healing and invasion assays were performed, which showed that BIRB796 inhibited the migration and invasion of human GBM cells. We found that BIRB796 treatment significantly decreased the formation of the cytoskeleton and thus downregulated the movement ability of the cells, as shown by phalloidin staining and vimentin immunofluorescence staining. Real-time polymerase chain reaction showed that the mRNA levels of MMP-2, Vimentin, CyclinD1, and Snail-1 were downregulated. Consistently, the expressions of MMP-2, Vimentin, CyclinD1, and p-p38 were also decreased after BIRB796 treatment. Taken together, all our results demonstrated that BIRB796 could play an antitumor role by inhibiting the proliferation and invasion in GBM cells. Thus, BIRB796 may be used as an adjuvant therapy to improve the therapeutic efficacy of GBM treatment.

In order to research the influence of composite surfactant solutions on the wetting ability of coal, the wettability parameters, pore structure parameters, and surface microscopic morphology were determined in this study. The results show that the wettability of the surfactant can be improved by adding NaCl. As the concentration of NaCl increased, the spreading coefficient of the NaCl–SDS composite solution increases; the spreading coefficient increased from −10.838 to −3.7624 mN/m. The surface free energy decreased from −2.031 to 3.670 J/mol × 103, and the adhesion work decreased from 113.802 to 55.058 mJ/m2. In terms of the pore structure and surface morphology of coal, the pore size will affect the wettability of coal. The contact angle reduces with pore size increase (R2 = 0.955). The surface pores of coal treated with the NaCl–SDS composite solution increase and the fracture connectivity is improved, which facilitated the solution to penetrate coal for wetting. The results of this paper have great practical significance for mining at the face to reduce coal dust pollution.

Colloidosomes have attracted great interest in recent years because of their capability for storage and delivery of small molecules for medical and pharmaceutical applications. However, traditional polymer shell colloidosomes leak low molecular weight drugs due to their intrinsic shell permeability. Here, we report aqueous core colloidosomes with a silver shell, which seals the core and makes the shell impermeable. The silver-coated colloidosomes were prepared by reacting l-ascorbic acid in the microcapsule core with silver nitrate in the wash solution. The silver shell colloidosomes were then modified by using 4,4'-dithiodibutyric acid and cross-linked with rabbit Immunoglobulin G (IgG). Label-free surface plasmon resonance was used to test the specific targeting of the functional silver shell with rabbit antigen. To break the shells, ultrasound treatment was used. The results demonstrate that a new type of functional silver-coated colloidosome with immunoassay targeting, nonpermeability, and ultrasound sensitivity could be applied to many medical applications.

Genome mining of actinomycete bacteria aims at the discovery of novel bioactive secondary metabolites that can be developed into drugs. A new repressor-based biosensor to detect activated secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters in Streptomyces was developed. Biosynthetic gene clusters for undecylprodigiosin and coelimycin in the genome of Streptomyces lividans TK24, which encoded TetR-like repressors and appeared to be almost "silent" based on the RNA-seq data, were chosen for the proof-of-principle studies. The bpsA reporter gene for indigoidine synthetase was placed under control of the promotor/operator regions presumed to be controlled by the cluster-associated TetR-like repressors. While the biosensor for undecylprodigiosin turned out to be nonfunctional, the coelimycin biosensor was shown to perform as expected, turning on biosynthesis of indigoidine in response to the concomitant production of coelimycin. The developed reporter system concept can be applied to those cryptic gene clusters that encode metabolite-sensing repressors to speed up discovery of novel bioactive compounds in Streptomyces. This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in [ACS Synthetic Biology], copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see [insert ACS Articles on Request author-directed link to Published Work, see http://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/articlesonrequest/index.html].