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Psoriasis is an autoimmune inflammatory disease which is fundamentally different from dermatitis. Its treatments include topical medications and systemic drugs depending on different stages of the disease. However, these commonly used therapies are falling far short of clinical needs due to various drawbacks. More precise therapeutic strategies with minimized side effects and improved compliance are highly demanded. Recently, the rapid development of biomaterial-based therapies has made it possible and promising to attain topical psoriasis treatment. In this review, we briefly describe the significance and challenges of the topical treatment of psoriasis and emphatically overview the latest progress in novel biomaterial-based topical therapies for psoriasis including microneedles, nanoparticles, nanofibers, and hydrogels. Current clinical trials related to each biomaterial are also summarized and discussed.

Successful dermal wound regeneration requires the coordination of repair cells and cellular signals with the extracellular matrix (ECM), which serves as an indispensable mechanical and biological supporter for cell functions and communications with varied cytokines during healing processes. Here, we developed an injectable bioactive wound dressing, methacrylated hyaluronic acid (Me-HA)-based hydrogel loading with basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), endowing the dressing with the pleiotropic bioactivity to mimic natural ECM. This bFGF@Me-HA dressing was applied to a mouse with full-thickness excisional wounds to investigate its positive roles in wound repair owing to the complementary functions of HA with sustained release of bioactive bFGF. Compared with the single Me-HA and bFGF group, bFGF@Me-HA hydrogel dressings significantly enhanced wound healing with accelerated re-epithelialization, granulation formation, collagen, deposition and skin appendage regeneration. Further investigations showed significantly promoted cell proliferation and vascularization in the bFGF@Me-HA group, which was mediated by the upregulation of transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expressions. In conclusion, this bFGF@Me-HA hydrogel realized the optimization of simple ECM mimic dressing via introducing the bioactive effector, bFGF, and has the potential to be widely used as an effective bioactive ECM-based wound dressing in future wound care.

Background: Effective cancer immunotherapy is significantly affected by intratumoral heterogeneity, not only in different cell types and functions but also in the spatial pattern of immune cells within the tumor tissue. While most single-cell RNA sequencing technologies could enable the exploration of gene expression heterogeneity at the single-cell level, they cannot reveal spatial information within the tumor for us to map the whole transcriptome with morphological context. Spatial transcriptomics is an in situ capturing technique, which profiles gene expression at the RNA level, whilst preserving the spatial information of histological tissue sections. Thus we try to develop our spatial transcriptomics assay through a serial of validation experiments and to explore the mechanism of immune therapy against tumors. Material and Method: Firstly, the tumor was frozen and sections were cryosectioned at 10 μm thickness. Sections processing including H&E staining, tissue optimization, permeabilization, reverse transcription, and cDNA library preparation was carried out following the user guide of Visium Spatial Gene Expression Reagent Kits (10X Genomics). And the final cDNA libraries were sequenced using the Illumina Novaseq instrument. Using gene expression matrix and aligned H&E image processed by Cell Ranger and Loupe Browser with default parameters, we performed data QC, normalization, dimensionality reduction, and clustering by Seurat and cell components identification in tumor microenvironment based on a multistep approach. Differential gene expression and spatial heterogeneity were analyzed in each cluster. Results: Here we established a reliable system for spatial transcriptomics assay to elucidate the mechanism of anti-PD1 treatment in MC38 syngeneic colorectal tumor. Using this system, we constructed the gene expression spatial patterns of tumor cells and immune cells, including periphery and center of tumor cell, immune-cell enrichment area, and tumor cell surrounding the immune cell. Furthermore, we explored the cell-cell interactions in which the tumor cells directly interact with adjacent non-tumor cells, for example, macrophages. Using this system, we tried to investigate the mechanism of anti-PD-1 therapy against the tumors by comparing the spatial transcriptome profiles after the treatment with anti-PD-1 or isotype control in colorectal cancer models. Interestingly, changes in both gene-level and spatial levels were observed, and it will help reveal how the immune therapy may shake up the complex ecosystem. Summary: We established a reliable system for spatial transcriptomics analysis and explored the mechanism of anti-PD-1 treatment against the colorectal cancer by using this system. Citation Format: Panpan Wang, Huacheng He, Qiyao Zhang, Jingjing Wang, Dan Lu, Fei Duan, Qiangqiang Fan, Qingyang Gu, Qunsheng Ji. Establishment of spatial transcriptomics assay to study the mechanism of immune therapy against tumors [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 6128.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) often leads to persistent functional deficits due to loss of neurons and glia after injury. Hemisection spinal cord injury (HSCI) is a special type of SCI. The most important difference between HSCI and SCI is the occurrence of spinal cord dissection. Therefore, a calcium alginate hydrogel combined with dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) and fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) was designed based on the principle that cadherin expression is regulated by calcium ion concentration. Each element in Ca2+@Alg-FGF21 + DPSC hydrogel can exert different effects 1). calcium ions can regulate cadherin to achieve self-adhesion; 2). alginic acid can absorb calcium ions to prevent calcium overload induced injury; 3) FGF21 can regulate microenvironment; 4). DPSCs can supplement exogenous neurons. The multi-factorially comprehensive effects were hypothesized to improve the HSCI recovery. It was revealed in our study that Ca2+@Alg-FGF21 + DPSC hydrogel could effectively promote the recovery after spinal cord hemisection in mice via regulating apoptosis and autophagy, providing potential clues and cues of using Ca2+@Alg-FGF21 + DPSC hydrogel for HSCI treatment.