Vaccines show great potential for both prophylactic and therapeutic use in infections, cancer, and other diseases. With the rapid development of bio-technologies and materials sciences, nanomaterials are playing essential roles in novel vaccine formulations and can boost antigen effectiveness by operating as delivery systems to enhance antigen processing and/or as immune-potentiating adjuvants to induce or potentiate immune responses. The effect of nanoparticles in vaccinology showed enhanced antigen stability and immunogenicity as well as targeted delivery and slow release. However, obstacles remain due to the lack of fundamental knowledge on the detailed molecular working mechanism and bio-effects of nanoparticles. This review provides a broad overview of the current improvements in nanoparticles in vaccinology. Modern nanoparticle vaccines are classified by the nanoparticles' action based on either delivery system or immune potentiator approaches. The mechanisms of interaction of nanoparticles with the antigens and the immune system are discussed. Nanoparticle vaccines approved for use are also listed. A fundamental understanding of the bio-distribution and the fate of nanoparticles will accelerate the rational design of new nanoparticles comprising vaccines in the future.
Abstract:Various clinical practices prove that traditional Chinese medicines, integrated traditionalChinese and western medicines make enormous contributions to tumor treatment as well as alleviation of chemotherapy side effect. Alkaloid, polysaccharide and saponin are examples of natural bioactive products that can impede the progression of tumors. Besides, researches on the widely-used tradition Chinese anti-tumor medicine formulas indicate that these agents can induce apoptosis of tumor cells. Therefore, there is an extensive perspective in natural bioactive materials as clinical tumor therapy. This review provides an overview of some natural products used as anti-tumor remedies and the molecular mechanisms they are involved in apoptosis induction, tumor angiogenesis and tumor metastasis.
Medulloblastoma (MB) is the most common malignant brain tumor in infants and children. Four molecular subtypes of MB are recognized: WNT, SHH, Group 3 (G3), and Group 4 (G4). Compared with WNT and SHH subtypes, G3 MBs exhibit significantly worse outcomes and higher metastatic rates, and there is no effective treatment yet. Moreover, G3 and G4 MBs are much more common in boys than girls, i.e., sex bias, which also plays important roles in cancer prognosis and drug response. However, the molecular mechanism of G3 remains unclear, and there are no well-identified biomarker genes associated with these phenotypes, i.e., worse survival rate, higher metastasis rate, and sex bias. In this exploratory study, we aim to identify potential biomarkers associated with the three phenotypes using integrative analysis of gene expression, methylation and copy number variation datasets. In the results, we identified a set of biomarker genes and linked them into a network signature. The network signature showed better performance in the separation of G3 MB patients into subtypes with a significant difference in terms of the three phenotypes. To identify potentially effective drugs for G3 MBs, a set of drugs with diverse targets were prioritized, which can potentially inhibit the network signature. These drugs or combinations thereof might be effective for G3 treatment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.