Cyclin-dependent kinase 9 (CDK9), which regulates transcriptional elongation, is an attractive therapeutic target for many cancers, especially for cancers driven by transcriptional dysregulation. In particular, CDK9 promotes RNA polymerase II pause/release, a rate-limiting step in normal transcriptional regulation that is frequently dysregulated in cancers. Emerging evidence indicates that selective CDK9 inhibition or degradation may provide a therapeutic benefit against certain cancers. Indeed, the development of CDK9 modulators (inhibitors and degraders) has attracted great attention, with several molecules currently under clinical development. This review provides an overview of recent advances in CDK9 modulators in general, with special emphasis on compounds under clinical evaluation and new emerging strategies, such as proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs).
Health risks in an
extremely cold environment make warm retention
equipment highly desirable. However, creating materials with a high
warm retention performance and robust mechanical property to durably
prevent against the harsh conditions is highly challenging. Herein,
we report on a one-step and facile strategy to fabricate stretchable
and superelastic fibrous sponges by creating unique “stiff–soft”
polymer networks within fibers and bonding architecture among fibers.
The premise of this design is that stiff polystyrene can endow materials
with rigidity and soft polyurethane can absorb energy during mechanical
deformation. Benefiting from this systematic tailoring for the polymer
and assembling networks, the resultant fibrous sponges exhibit a unique
tensile recovery property, a large breaking elongation of 70%, and
an outstanding resilience for resisting 100 cyclic compressions with
50% strain under −50 °C. Moreover, the fibrous sponges
possess dramatic characteristics of high porosity (∼99.31%),
ultralight property (volume density = 7.68 mg cm–3), and effective warmth retention (thermal conductivity = 27.6 mW
m–1 K–1), as well as technical
features of the simple assembly process to scale up easily. The preparation
of fibrous sponges provides a new vision for developing ultralight
and efficient warmth retention materials.
Needle coke is a type of high-quality coke with needle-like texture and layer structure. [1] Also, it presents a turbine carbon structure under the scanning electron microscope. [2,3] Needle coke was acknowledged as an exceptional raw material to obtain carbon materials, because it has low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), high mechanical strength, easy to graphitization, and other advantages. Therefore, it is widespread used in lithium battery anode materials, high-power, ultrahigh-power graphite electrodes, and so on. [4,5] At present, residual heavy oil, catalytic cracking slurry, and high-temperature coal tar pitch are commonly used to prepare needle coke. [6][7][8] The heavy pitch component of medium-and lowtemperature coal tar has the advantages of high aromaticity, low quinoline insoluble (QI) content, and narrower molecular weight distribution. [9] So, it is an excellent raw material for the preparation of needle coke. However, the higher heteroatom content and saturation in the raw materials lead to higher thermal reaction rate in a carbonization process, which is unfavorable to prepare needle coke and the mesophase with a wide-area streamline structure. [10,11] Because the mesophase with an orderly wide-area streamlined structure is precursor for the production of high-performance green needle coke during the coke is pulled by the airflow. [12] The appropriate pretreatment methods are used to reduce the thermal reactivity of raw materials, which is essential for preparing mesophase pitch. Garcia et al. [11] reported that the
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