ZJU scientists report advances in hepatocellular carcinoma
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2021-02-23
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China is a country with a high incidence of liver cancer. According to the Global Cancer Report, the number of liver cancer cases in China accounts for 46.7% of the total number of cases all over the world. Although appreciable progress in the treatment of HCC has occurred over the past few years, current therapeutic effects are far from satisfactory, and the 5‐year survival rate varies from 14% to 18%. Various kinase inhibitors, such as sorafenib and lenvatinib, come as an enormous boon to live...
ZJU scientists reveal transcription activation by a sliding clamp
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2021-02-18
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For decades, transcription of bacteriophage T4 late genes has served as a model system to investigate mechanisms of transcription regulation. The T4 late promoters consist of a -10-like element placed at the position corresponding to the bacterial promoter -10 element. Nevertheless, there is no sequence conservation at the position corresponding to the bacterial promoter -35 element. In recent years, the research team led by Prof. FENG Yu from the Zhejiang University School of Medicine ...
Decoding personal biotic and abiotic airborne exposome
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2251119
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2021-02-08
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Human diseases are caused by the interplay between intrinsic molecular dynamics and environmental exposures, which can be broadly defined as biological, chemical, physical and even psychological exposures. Abnormal environmental exposures, especially during early life, can lead to a variety of acute and chronic diseases, including cancer, allergy/asthma and autoimmune diseases. The ‘exposome’ was first proposed by Christopher Wild to encompass the totality of human environmental exposures from...
Zero to one: at the cutting-edge of research
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2021-02-02
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“I attach immense importance to the breakthrough from 0 to 1 and strive relentlessly to pursue innovation and transcendence, which is a driving force for my constant efforts in the cutting-edge research,” said ZHU Yongqun, a recipient of the 16th China Youth Science and Technology Award.ZHU Yongqun has long been committed to research into dangerous disease-inducing bacteria. He has achieved success in unveiling a multitude of “secret weapons” of pathogenic bacteria to overcome immune de...
Scientists identify the structure of adhesion GPCR–G complexes
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2021-01-31
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Recently, the research teams led by ZHANG Yan from the Zhejiang University School of Medicine and Zhejiang Laboratory for Systems & Precision Medicine, SUN Jinpeng from Peking University and Shandong University, and H. Eric Xu from the CAS Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica co-published an article entitled “Structures of glucocorticoid-bound adhesion receptor GPR97-Go complex” in Nature. It is the first time that the structure of adhesion GPCR–G complexes has been identifi...
Scientists create single-cell deep-immune atlas of COVID-19 and discover its immunopathology
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/english/2021/0202/c65147a2249859/page.psp
2021-01-30
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As COVID-19 has been raging across the globe in the past year, it has not only constituted tremendous hazards to the safety and well-being of human beings but also incurred immeasurable economic losses. Although most of COVID-19 patients remain asymptomatic or experience only mild symptoms, about 20% suffer overt pneumonia and roughly 5% cases progress to life-threatening Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and severe or atypical systemic inflammation. Then how does COVID-19 differ from c...
Scientists discover new transmission mechanism of exosome-mediated sorafenib-resistance in hepatocellular carcinoma
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/english/2021/0127/c65147a2248221/page.psp
2021-01-27
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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver tumor with an increasing global incidence. In 2018, HCC was the sixth most frequently diagnosed cancer and the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Sorafenib is the first FDA-approved targeted therapy for advanced HCC. A previous study showed that sorafenib prolonged the median overall survival (OS) by 2.3−3 months in advanced HCC patients that did not qualify for liver transplantation or resection. However, soraf...
Scientists discover molecular mechanism for deafness induced by defects in modifications of mitochondrial tRNAs
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/english/2021/0127/c65147a2248161/page.psp
2021-01-22
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Hearing impairment may result from a multitude of factors, including heredity, environment and their interactions. Mitochondria are the hub of energy metabolism in eukaryotic cells and the control center of cellular signaling. tRNA plays a crucial role as a carrier of amino acid transport during protein synthesis. A lot of posttranscriptional modifications exist in mitochondrial tRNAs (8.7%). In human mitochondria, 18 types of nucleotide modifications are present in the 137 positions of 22 tRNA ...
Scientists discover a natural liver-accumulating drug delivery vehicle
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2021-01-04
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Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are superb potential vectors for the delivery of therapeutic drugs with their low immunogenicity and cytotoxicity. However, issues with biological safety and disease targeting substantially limit their clinical application. EVs from red blood cells (RBC-EVs) are a potential drug delivery vehicle, given their high production and beneficial characteristics in biosafety. The research team led by Prof. CAI Zhijian from Zhejiang University School of Basic Medical Sci...
Pharmacological targeting of MCL-1 promotes mitophagy to treat Alzheimer’s disease
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/english/2020/1125/c65147a2220679/page.psp
2020-11-20
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Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a severe neurodegenerative disorder that exerts an extremely adverse impact on individuals, families and society at large, with symptoms such as memory loss, cognitive dysfunction mood swings and loss of kinetic abilities. At present, there are about 50 million people worldwide with AD and this number is projected to soar to 152 million. AD is one of the most financially costly diseases. Currently, 1 trillion dollars or so is spent annually worldwide on the trea...