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BACKGROUND: Sacha inchi meal (SIM) is a by‐product of oil processing. Our previous studies showed that SIM hydrolysates exhibited dipeptidyl peptidase‐IV (DPP‐IV) inhibition activity. The objective of the present work was to identify and characterize the bioactive peptides from protein hydrolysates of SIM; enzyme kinetics and peptide–enzyme interaction were also investigated. RESULTS: From SIM hydrolysates, ten peptides responsible for the activity were identified: GPSRGF (GF‐6), FPILSPDPA (FA‐9), APYRRGGKI (AI‐9), WPYH (WH‐4), DPATWLALPT (DT‐10), NPEDEFRQQ (NQ‐9), APESKPVGV (AV‐9), LEWRDR (LR‐6), APVYWVQ (AQ‐7) and LLMWPY (LY‐6). The IC50 values of five peptides (GF‐6, WH‐4, AQ‐7, AV‐9 and LY‐6) with better inhibitory activity on DPP‐IV were within the range of 23.43–128.40 μmol L−1. AQ‐7 had the best activity, with an IC50 value of 23.43 μmol L−1. Enzyme kinetics indicated the presence of various inhibition types (mixed, non‐competitive and competitive). Isothermal titration microcalorimetry showed that the main forces of the binding sites between peptide (GF‐6 or AQ‐7) and DPP‐IV were hydrogen bond, hydrophobic interaction and van der Waals force. The key residues involved in peptide–enzyme interaction were determined by molecular docking. Furthermore, at a concentration of 800 μmol L−1, GF‐6 was found to significantly increase the glucose consumption in insulin‐resistant HepG2 cells (P < 0.05) compared with the model group. CONCLUSION: Sacha inchi meal‐derived peptides displayed potent DPP‐IV inhibition activity and could be used in the health food industry and as lead compounds for diabetes therapy. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Androgenic alopecia (AGA) is the most common type of hair loss, in which dihyrotestosterone (DHT) plays a crucial role via modulating androgen receptors in hair follicles. Aims: The current objective is to search for new therapy of AGA. Methods: In the present study, we investigated the effects of sulforaphane, its precursor glucosinlates and glucosinlates‐enriched Brassica oleracea L.var.italic Planch extract (BOE) on the growth of hair follicle and the related matrix cell viability, as well as the possible underlying mechanisms in vitro and ex vivo. Results: We observed that BOE, glucosinlates, and sulforaphane can prevent the testosterone‐induced inhibition of dermal papilla (DP) cells viability. BOE and sulforaphane can even hinder the testosterone‐induced inhibition of HaCaT cells viability. Moreover, BOE, glucosinlates, and sulforaphane can up‐regulate the cytokeratin gene expression in HaCaT cells, prevent the increase in Bax gene levels induced by testosterone in DP, and promote the growth of hair follicle of mice. These effects can be linked to the enhancement of DP and HaCaT cells activities and the prevention of the testosterone‐induced cell apoptosis of DP cells. Conclusions: Taken together, BOE, glucosinlates, and sulforaphane can promote the growth of hair follicle of mice and can be used as potential treatment agents for androgenic alopecia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of this study was to identify the risk factors and prognosis of patients with cancer‐associated myositis (CAM). Method: Four hundred and eighty‐seven patients with dermatomyositis (DM), clinical amyopathic dermatomyositis (CADM) and polymyositis (PM) from 3 clinical centers were enrolled retrospectively in this study. Clinical and laboratory data of CAM and non‐CAM patients were compared. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify risk factors of CAM. Results: Out of the 487 patients with DM/CADM/PM, 7.0% (34/487) of patients were classified as CAM. Older age (53.91 ± 13.32 vs. 48.76 ± 14.34 years), heliotrope rash (61.8% vs. 41.9%), shawl sign (41.2% vs. 22.1%), V sign (58.8% vs. 38.6%) were observed significantly more commonly in patients with CAM than those without CAM (all P <.05). Fever (17.7% vs. 37.8%), arthralgia/arthritis (23.5% vs. 45.7%), interstitial lung disease (ILD, 38.2% vs 68.9%) were significantly less common in the CAM group than the non‐CAM group. Age at onset (odds ratio [OR] 1.036, 95% CI 1.001‐1.072, P =.042), shawl sign (OR 2.748, 95% CI 1.107‐6.822, P =.029), anti‐transition initiation factor (TIF)‐1γ antibody (OR 4.012, 95% CI 1.268‐12.687, P =.018) were identified as the initial risk factors for the onset of CAM, and ILD was identified as a protective factor for CAM (OR 0.292, 95% CI 0.115‐0.739, P =.009). All‐cause mortality was significantly higher in CAM patients compared with non‐CAM patients (P =.001). Conclusion: The mortality of patients with CAM was higher than DM/CADM/PM patients without cancer. Malignancy should be screened in DM/CADM/PM patients especially with risk factors, including older age, shawl sign, anti‐TIF‐1γ antibody, and lack of ILD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Image dehazing technology has attracted much interest in the field of image processing. Most existing dehazing methods based on neural networks are inflexible and do not consider the loss in haze‐related feature space. They sacrificed texture details and perceptual characteristics in images. To overcome these weaknesses, we propose an image‐to‐image dehazing model based on generative adversarial networks (DHGAN) with dark channel prior. The DHGAN takes a hazy image as input and directly outputs a haze‐free image by applying a U‐net‐based generator. In addition to pixelwise loss and perceptual loss, we introduce dark‐channel‐minimizing loss to constrain the generated images to the manifold of natural images, thus leading to better texture details and perceptual properties. Comparative experiments on benchmark images with several state‐of‐the‐art dehazing methods demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DHGAN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Secure mechanisms have been adapted to satisfy the needs of mobile subscribers; however, the mobile environment is quite different from a desktop PC or laptop‐based environment. The existing attack patterns in mobile environments are also quite different, and the countermeasures applied should be enhanced. In regards to usability, the mobile environment is based on mobility, and thus, mobile devices are designed and developed to enhance the owner's efficiency. To avoid forgetting passwords, people are willing to adopt simple alphanumeric‐character combinations, which are easy to remember and convenient to enter. As a result, the passwords have a high probability of being cracked or exposed. In this paper, we study the potential security problems caused by simple and weak passwords, discuss drawbacks of some conventional works, and propose 3 creative schemes to increase the complexity and strength of passwords by applying the envisioned features. Note that our proposals are based on the assumption that the textual passwords are not difficult for users to remember or enter and do not cause inconvenience to users. In other words, the proposed methods can increase the complexity of simple passwords without the awareness of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the whole proteins from a Chinese three-striped box turtle ( Cuora trifasciata) were extracted and hydrolyzed using three proteases (alcalase, papain, and protamex). By orthogonal experiments, the optimal hydrolysis conditions for producing peptides with the highest cancer cells growth inhibition activity were determined. Such as, the maximum inhibition on MCF-7 cancer cells (92.37% at 1 mg/mL) was achieved by papain hydrolysis (pH 8, 37 °C, enzyme-to-substrate ratio (E/S) 1.5%), and the maximum inhibition on HepG2 cancer cells (94.16% at 1 mg/mL) was reached by protamex hydrolysis (pH 8, 40 °C, E/S 2%). Using ultrafiltration and Sephadex G-15 column chromatography, two polypeptides M2 and F4 were isolated. At 500 μg/mL, M2 exhibited 74.7% and 62.9% of antiproliferation activities on MCF-7 and HepG2 cancer cells, respectively; and F4 displayed good inhibitory effects on MCF-7 (70.59%) and HepG2 (78.6%) cancer cells. M2 and F4 had lower inhibition (<20%) than drug 5-FU (>60%) on normal liver cells L-O2. Moreover, three peptides, EMLQPPL, PGKPLFL, and SCCSCDED, were identified; their inhibitory effects on cancer cells were confirmed after synthesis. These data, for the first time, demonstrated that Cuora trifasciata-derived proteins could be used for preparing antiproliferation peptides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Spirulina platensis is an excellent source of proteins (>60%) that can be hydrolyzed into bioactive peptides. RESULTS In this study, whole proteins of Spirulina platensis were extracted and hydrolyzed using three gastrointestinal endopeptidases (pepsin, trypsin and chymotrypsin). Subsequently, gel filtration chromatography was employed to separate hydrolysates, and four fractions (Tr1-Tr4) were obtained. Among them, Tr2 showed the strongest anti-proliferation activities on three cancer cells ( MCF-7, HepG-2 and SGC-7901), with IC50 values of <31.25, 36.42 and 48.25 µg mL−1, respectively. Furthermore, a new peptide, HVLSRAPR, was identified from fraction Tr1. This peptide exhibited strong inhibition on HT-29 cancer cells with an IC50 value of 99.88 µg mL−1. CONCLUSION Taken together, these peptides possessed anti-proliferation activities on cancer cells and low cytotoxicity on normal cells, suggesting that they might serve as a natural anticancer agent for nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, tilapia collagen peptide ( TCP) was prepared by alcalase hydrolysis of tilapia skin, and the antioxidant and hypoglycaemic effects of TCP were investigated. The results showed that TCP possessed DPPH and ABTS+ free radicals-scavenging activities. In diabetic mice in which diabetes was induced by injection of alloxan (50 mg kg−1 bw), high-dose TCP (1.7 g kg−1 bw) and the drug metformin (1.0 g kg−1 bw) were found to reduce 31.8% and 30.3% of blood glucose levels in 25 days, respectively. Moreover, in diabetic mice receiving high-dose TCP, antioxidant enzymes SOD and CAT were increased by 23% and 59.2%, respectively, and MDA was decreased by 39.1%. Comparing the treated high-dose TCP group with the metformin group, there were similar SOD (61.5 U mg−1 vs. 60.2 U mg−1) and MDA (1.4 nmol mg−1 vs. 1.3 nmol mg−1), but more (~7%) CAT (359.8 U g−1 vs. 336.1 U g−1). Together, the present data, for the first time, demonstrated that TCP possessed hypoglycaemic effects in mice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The objective of this study was to identify proteomic biomarkers specific for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) in combination with weak cationic exchange (WCX) magnetic beads. Methods: Serum samples from 50 patients with RA and 110 disease controls (50 SLE and 60 SS) and 51 healthy individuals were analyzed. The samples were randomly divided into a training set or test set to develop a diagnostic model for RA. Results: A total of 83 protein peaks were identified to be related with RA, in which four of the peaks with mass-charge ratio (m/z) at 8133.85, 5844.60, 13 541.3 and 14 029.0 were selected to establish a model for diagnosis of RA. This classification model could separate patients with RA from diseased and healthy controls with sensitivity of 84.0% and specificity of 92.5%, and its accuracy was confirmed in the blind testing set with high sensitivity and specificity of 80.0% and 93.3%, respectively. Conclusions: This study suggested that potential serum biomarkers for RA diagnosis could be discovered by MALDI-TOF-MS. The classification tree model set up in this study might be used as a novel diagnostic tool for RA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant lectins have displayed a variety of biological activities. In this study, for the first time, a 27 kDa arabinose- and mannose-specific lectin from Broccolini (Brassica oleracea Italica × Alboglabra), named as BL (Broccolini lectin), was purified by an activity-driven protocol. Mass spectrometry analysis and database search indicated that no matches with any plant lectin were found, but BL contained some peptide fragments (QQQGQQGQQLQQVISR, QQGQQQGQQGQQLQQVISR and VCNIPQVSVCPF QK). BL exhibited hemagglutinating activity against chicken erythrocytes at 4 µg/mL. BL retained full hemagglutinating activity at pH 7-8 and temperature 30-40°C, and had an optimal activity in Ca2+ solution. Bioactivity assay revealed that BL exhibited dose-dependent inhibition activity on 5 bacterial species with IC50 values of 143.95-486.33 μg/mL, and on 3 cancer cells with IC50 values of 178.82-350.93 μg/mL. Notably, 5-fold reduction in IC50 values was observed on normal L-O2 vs cancerous HepG-2 cells (924.35 vs. 178.82 μg/mL). This suggests that BL should be promising in food and medicine. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 31:736-743, 2015 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spirulina platensis is a multicellular edible blue-green alga with abundant proteins (∼60%). No report is available on the antitumor polypeptides from the whole proteins of S. platensis. In this study, for the first time, an antitumor polypeptide Y2 from trypsin digest of S. platensis proteins was obtained by using freeze-thawing plus ultrasonication extraction, hydrolysis with four enzymes (trypsin, alcalase, papain, and pepsin), and gel filtration chromatography. The results showed that the degree of hydrolysis can be ordered as: trypsin (38.5%) > alcalase (31.2%) > papain (27.8%) > pepsin (7.1%). For MCF-7 and HepG2 cells, at 250 µg/mL, the maximum inhibitory rate of Y2 was 97%, while standard drug 5-FU was 55 and 97%, respectively. Furthermore, the nanoencapsulation of Y2 with chitosan (CS) was also investigated. After nanoencapsulation, the maximum encapsulation efficiency and polypeptides contents are 49 and 15%, respectively; and the antitumor activity is basically not lost. These data demonstrated the potential of nanopolypeptides (Y2-CS) in food and pharmaceutical applications. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 29:1230-1238, 2013 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To evaluate the safety of tumor necrosis factor-α ( TNF-α) monoclonal antibody (infliximab) therapy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis ( RA) and previous exposure to hepatitis B virus ( HBV) who had normal liver function. Methods This is a retrospective study from a 26-week, prospective, multicenter trial in 234 patients with RA who received infusions of infliximab (3 mg/kg at week 0, 2, 6, 14 and 22). The medical records of these patients were reviewed, including the information on disease duration, laboratory tests and HBV markers. The data on liver function during the study was analyzed, as well as comparison between patients with previous exposure to HBV and patients without such exposure. Results Forty-one patients with previous exposure to HBV were HBsAg(-). Forty patients had normal alanine aminotransferase ( ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase ( AST) and only one patient with positive anti- HBc showed an elevated ALT level before administration of infliximab, and had a further increase of ALT level at week 14, but decreased thereafter. The average ALT and AST levels rose slightly during the treatment but remained in normal range and the differences were insignificant compared with baseline. There was no statistically significant difference in the incidence of liver function abnormalities during the treatment of infliximab between the patients with previous exposure to HBV and those without such exposure. Conclusion In patients with RA and previous exposure to HBV but with a negative HBsAg and normal liver function at baseline, liver function abnormalities were not observed during infliximab treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chlorella pyrenoidosa is a unicellular green algae and has been a popular foodstuff worldwide. However, no reports on the antitumor peptides from such a microalgae are available in the literature. In this study, using low-temperature high-pressure extraction, enzymatic hydrolysis, ion exchange, and gel filtration chromatography, we separated a polypeptide that exhibited inhibitory activity on human liver cancer HepG2 cells, and named the polypeptide CPAP (C. pyrenoidosa antitumor polypeptide). Furthermore, the micro- and nanoencapsulation of CPAP were investigated by using two methods: complex coacervation and ionotropic gelation. The in vitro release tests revealed that CPAP was well preserved against gastric enzymatic degradation after micro/nanoencapsulation and the slowly controlled release in the intestine could be potentially achieved. These results suggest that CPAP may be a useful ingredient in food, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical applications. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 29:681-687, 2013 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]