Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is the leading cause of chronic kidney disease. Current therapies for DKD are insufficient. Therefore, there is an urgent need for identifying new therapies. An increasing number of micro RNAs (miRNAs) and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been demonstrated to modulate the progression of diabetic kidney disease. Nevertheless, until now, there have been few reports evaluating the relevance of circular RNAs (circRNAs) in DKD. circRNAs have been reported to regulate the occurrence and development of multiple diseases. In this study, we intended to explore the circRNA expression profiles and determine the role of circRNA in DKD. We identified a series of dysregulated circRNAs in glucose-stressed HK-2 cells using circRNA microarray analysis. Among the candidate circRNAs, we found that circACTR2 was upregulated and may be involved in inflammation and pyroptosis. Knockdown of circACTR2 significantly decreased pyroptosis, interleukin (IL)-1β release and collagen IV and fibronectin production, indicating the effective regulation by circACTR2 of cell death and inflammation. Overall, our study identified a new circRNA, circACTR2, that regulates high glucose-induced pyroptosis, inflammation and fibrosis in proximal tubular cells. The present study preliminarily explores the role of circRNAs in pyroptosis of tubular cells, and provides novel insight into the pathogenesis of DKD and new therapeutic strategies.

Three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound imaging is essential for a wide range of clinical applications in diagnostic and interventional cardiology, radiology, and obstetrics for prenatal imaging. 3D ultrasound imaging is also pivotal for advancing technical developments of emerging imaging technologies such as elastography, blood flow imaging, functional ultrasound (fUS), and super-resolution microvessel imaging. At present, however, existing 3D ultrasound imaging methods suffer from low imaging volume rate, suboptimal imaging quality, and high costs associated with 2D ultrasound transducers. Here we report a novel 3D ultrasound imaging technique, Fast Acoustic Steering via Tilting Electromechanical Reflectors (FASTER), which provides both high imaging quality and fast imaging speed while at low-cost. Capitalizing upon a unique water-immersible and fast-tilting micro-fabricated mirror to scan ultrafast plane waves in the elevational direction, FASTER is capable of high volume rate, large field-of-view (FOV) 3D imaging with conventional 1D transducers. In this paper, we introduce the fundamental concepts of FASTER and present a series of calibration and validation studies for FASTER 3D imaging. In a wire phantom and tissuemimicking phantom study, we demonstrated that FASTER was capable of providing spatially accurate 3D images with a 500 Hz imaging volume rate and an imaging FOV with a range of 48 degrees (20 mm at 25 mm depth) in the elevational direction. We also showed that FASTER had comparable imaging quality with conventional mechanical translation-based 3D imaging. The principles and results presented in this study establish the technical foundation for the new paradigm of high volume rate 3D ultrasound imaging based on ultrafast plane waves and fast-tilting, water-immersible micro-fabricated mirrors. Index Terms-Three-dimensional ultrasound, waterimmersible micro-fabricated mirror, plane wave imaging, high volume rate.

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