Hepatic fibrosis occurs when liver tissue becomes scarred from repetitive liver injury and inflammatory responses; it can progress to cirrhosis and eventually to hepatocellular carcinoma. Previously, we reported that neoagarooligosaccharides (NAOs), produced by the hydrolysis of agar by β-agarases, have hepatoprotective effects against acetaminophen overdose-induced acute liver injury. However, the effect of NAOs on chronic liver injury, including hepatic fibrosis, has not yet been elucidated. Therefore, we examined whether NAOs protect against fibrogenesis in vitro and in vivo. NAOs ameliorated PAI-1, α-SMA, CTGF and fibronectin protein expression and decreased mRNA levels of fibrogenic genes in TGF-β-treated LX-2 cells. Furthermore, downstream of TGF-β, the Smad signaling pathway was inhibited by NAOs in LX-2 cells. Treatment with NAOs diminished the severity of hepatic injury, as evidenced by reduction in serum alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase levels, in carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-induced liver fibrosis mouse models. Moreover, NAOs markedly blocked histopathological changes and collagen accumulation, as shown by H&E and Sirius red staining, respectively. Finally, NAOs antagonized the CCl4-induced upregulation of the protein and mRNA levels of fibrogenic genes in the liver. In conclusion, our findings suggest that NAOs may be a promising candidate for the prevention and treatment of chronic liver injury via inhibition of the TGF-β/Smad signaling pathway. 相似文献
The β-Carotene (BC), an important precursor of vitamin A (VA), possesses antioxidant activity but is fat-soluble and has low bioavailability. In previous in-vitro assays evaluating antioxidant and 2,2′-azobis(2-amidinopropane) dihydrochloride (AAPH) free radical scavenging, both BC and VA showed a strong ability to scavenge radicals and protected cells from oxidative stress. Here, we used artificially simulated gastrointestinal digestion and Caco-2 cell absorption models to evaluate the bioavailability of the BC during gastrointestinal digestion and absorption using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. We observed high absorptive and transfer rates of BC and detected retinol metabolites (Vitamin A). Therefore, BC can be detected in the acidic gastrointestinal environment using HPLC. Optimised method provided better separation of BC and VA in the column, improving the accuracy of the test results. 相似文献
Here, LiY(WO4)2 nanotubes are prepared via a feasible electrospinning technique. This new anode material shows excellent electrochemical properties. The capacity loss of LiY(WO4)2 nanotubes is as low as 6.9% after 156 cycles, while bulk LiY(WO4)2 presents the capacity loss higher than 55.0%. Even after 600 long-life cycles, the capacity loss of the nanotubes is only 9%. It can be seen that the hollow structure with a rough surface and a porous morphology contributes to the improvement of electrochemical performance. Furthermore, online X-ray diffraction (XRD) method is firstly applied to understand the lithium ions insertion/extraction mechanism of LiY(WO4)2 nanotubes. It can be concluded that it is an asymmetrical two-phase reaction. A phase transformation from LiY(WO4)2 to Li3Y(WO4)2 can be obviously seen from the in situ XRD during discharge process. While Li2Y(WO4)2 appears as an intermediate phase with a reverse charge reaction. In addition, in situ XRD also demonstrates that LiY(WO4)2 nanotubes have surprised electrochemical reversibility. All the above results indicate that LiY(WO4)2 nanotubes can be expected to be anode candidate for rechargeable lithium ion batteries (LIBs). 相似文献
In the process of reconstructing a historical event such as a rock concert only from video, the reconstruction of faces and expressions of the musicians is obviously important. However, in the process of rebuilding appearance, because of the low quality of the video of the recorded concert, the result of the reconstruction may be far from the real appearance. In this paper, a robust 3D face reconstruction application is described that can be applied to a video recording. The application first uses DeblurGAN program to run anti-ambiguity calculation and removes the ambiguity in the concert video. Then, the super-resolution program is used to enlarge every frame of the concert video by four times, thus making every frame of the video clearer. Finally, the 3D faces are obtained after 3D reconstruction of the processed video frames via the 3DMM_CNN program.
It was well known that solvent effect plays a very important role in the catalytic reaction. There are many theoretical studies on the solvent effect in homogeneous catalysis while there are few theoretical studies on the solvent effect in the heterogeneous catalytic reaction and there has been no work to investigate the solvent effect on furfural transformation in heterogeneous catalysis. In the present work, both the density functional calculations and the microkinetic analysis were performed to study the selective hydrogenation of furfural over Pt(111) in the presence of methanol as well as toluene and compared with that in the gas condition. The present results indicated that the methanol can enhance the adsorption strength of furfural and other oxygen-containing reaction species due to its relatively strong polarity properties and this can be a main reason for solvent-induced high activity and selectivity. Another reason is that reaction paths study showed that the presence of methanol solvent makes the dehydrogenation of furfural less thermochemical due to the fact that furfural is more stabilized than that of dehydrogenation species, and methanol also has an inhibition effect on the dehydrogenation of furfural in the kinetic aspect, and further energetic span theory proves highest activity and selectivity for hydrogenation in methanol solvent of vapor, methanol and toluene. Moreover, microkinetic model simulation demonstrated that the activity and selectivity of hydrogenation in methanol is both higher than that in vapor and toluene. The much higher activity in methanol is due to the stabilized adsorbed reactants in the surface, which leads to a higher surface coverage of furfural. It might be proposed based on the present work that a solvent with relatively strong polarity may be favorable for the high selective hydrogenation of furfural. 相似文献
This work demonstrates a facile Nb2O5-decorated electrocatalyst to prepare cost-effective Ni–Fe–P–Nb2O5/NF and compared HER & OER performance in alkaline media. The prepared electrocatalyst presented an outstanding electrocatalytic performance towards hydrogen evolution reaction, which required a quite low overpotential of 39.05 mV at the current density of ?10 mA cm?2 in 1 M KOH electrolyte. Moreover, the Ni–Fe–P–Nb2O5/NF catalyst also has excellent oxygen evolution efficiency, which needs only 322 mV to reach the current density of 50 mA cm?2. Furthermore, its electrocatalytic performance towards overall water splitting worked as both cathode and anode achieved a quite low potential of 1.56 V (10 mA cm?2). 相似文献
Photothermal therapy (PTT) has attracted great attention due to its noninvasive and effective use against cancer. Various photothermal agents (PTAs) including organic and inorganic PTAs have been developed in the last decades. Organic PTAs based on small-molecule dyes exhibit great potential for future clinical applications considering their good biocompatibility and easy chemical modification or functionalization. In this review, we discuss the recent progress of organic PTAs based on small-molecule dyes for enhanced PTT. We summarize the strategies to improve the light penetration of PTAs, methods to enhance their photothermal conversion efficiency, how to optimize PTAs’ delivery into deep tumors, and how to resist photobleaching under repeated laser irradiation. We hope that this review can rouse the interest of researchers in the field of PTAs based on small-molecule dyes and help them to fabricate next-generation PTAs for noninvasive cancer therapy. 相似文献