Radiotherapy (RT) is a cancer treatment that uses high doses of radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Although great success has been achieved on radiotherapy, there is still an intractable challenge to enhance radiation damage to tumor tissue and reduce side effects to healthy tissue. Radiosensitizers are chemicals or pharmaceutical agents that can enhance the killing effect on tumor cells by accelerating DNA damage and producing free radicals indirectly. In most cases, radiosensitizers have less effect on normal tissues. In recent years, several strategies have been exploited to develop radiosensitizers that are highly effective and have low toxicity. In this review, we first summarized the applications of radiosensitizers including small molecules, macromolecules, and nanomaterials, especially those that have been used in clinical trials. Second, the development states of radiosensitizers and the possible mechanisms to improve radiosensitizers sensibility are reviewed. Third, the challenges and prospects for clinical translation of radiosensitizers in oncotherapy are presented.

change) > = 1. VIP values were extracted from OPLS-DA result, which also contains score plots and permutation plots, generated using R package MetaboAnalystR. The data was log transform (log2) and mean centering before OPLS-DA. To avoid overfitting, a permutation test (200 permutations) was performed.Statistical Analyses: One-way and two-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests were used to determine statistical significance (*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001); p-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

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Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis, are chronic relapsing disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. Characterized pathologically by intestinal inflammation and epithelial injury, great challenges exist for the treatment of IBD due to its complicated etiology and incurable nature. Traditional strategies rely on frequent and long-term administration of high dosages of anti-inflammatory drugs, which inevitably cause side effects. Therefore, novel therapeutic methods and drug delivery systems capable of improving therapeutic effect while simultaneously decreasing side effects need to be developed. The emergence of nanotechnology provides alternative approaches for diagnosis and treatment of IBD, as nanoparticles (NPs) have unique physicochemical properties such as targeting to the site of inflammation and the ability to alter the pharmacokinetics of traditional drugs. This review first introduces the pathophysiological features and microenvironment of IBD, and then summarizes different strategies and mechanisms of NP-based colon-targeted drug delivery systems, including size-dependent, multi-stimuli responsive, active targeting, intestinal microbiota-related, and novel natural-derived NP-mediated drug delivery systems. We also discuss applications of nanozymes and NP-based imaging in diagnostics and treatment of IBD. Finally, challenges and prospects in the field are proposed to promote the development of targeted drug delivery for IBD treatment.

AimTo identify novel candidate genes for pancreatic cancer.MethodsWe performed a transcriptome‐wide association study (TWAS) analysis of pancreatic cancer (PC). GWAS summary data were driven from the published studies of PC, totally involving 558 542 SNPs in 1896 individuals with pancreatic cancer and 1939 healthy controls. FUSION software was applied to the PC GWAS summary data for tissue‐related TWAS analysis, including whole blood, peripheral blood, adipose, and pancreas. The functional relevance of identified genes with PC was further validated by Oncomine, STRING, and CluePedia tool.ResultsTranscriptome‐wide association study analysis identified 19 genes significantly associated with PC, such as LRP5L (P value = 5.21 × 10‐5), SOX4 (P value = 3.2 × 10‐4), and EGLN3 (P value = 6.2 × 10‐3). KEGG pathway enrichment analysis detected several PC‐associated pathways, such as One carbon pool by folate (P value = 1.60 × 10‐16), Cell cycle (P value = 1.27 × 10‐7), TGF‐beta signaling pathway (P value = 4.64 × 10‐6). Further comparing the 19 genes with previously identified overexpressed genes in PC patients found one overlapped gene SOX4.ConclusionWe identified some novel candidate genes and pathways associated with PC. Our results provide novel clues for the genetic mechanism studies of pancreatic cancer.

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