Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ranks the most common primary liver malignancy and the third leading cause of tumor-related mortality worldwide. Unfortunately, despite advances in HCC treatment, less than 40% of HCC patients are eligible for potentially curative therapies. Recently, cancer immunotherapy has emerged as one of the most promising approaches for cancer treatment. It has been proven therapeutically effective in many types of solid tumors, such as non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma. As an inflammation-associated tumor, it’s well-evidenced that the immunosuppressive microenvironment of HCC can promote immune tolerance and evasion by various mechanisms. Triggering more vigorous HCC-specific immune response represents a novel strategy for its management. Pre-clinical and clinical investigations have revealed that various immunotherapies might extend current options for needed HCC treatment. In this review, we provide the recent progress on HCC immunology from both basic and clinical perspectives, and discuss potential advances and challenges of immunotherapy in HCC.
Although survival outcomes of cancer patients have been improved dramatically via conventional chemotherapy and targeted therapy over the last decades, there are still some tough clinical challenges that badly needs to be overcome, such as anticancer drug resistance, inevitable recurrences, cancer progression and metastasis. Simultaneously, accumulated evidence demonstrates that aberrant glucose metabolism termed ‘the Warburg effect’ in cancer cell is closely associated with malignant phenotypes. In 2009, a novel ‘two-compartment metabolic coupling’ model, also named ‘the reverse Warburg effect’, was proposed and attracted lots of attention. Based on this new model, we consider whether this new viewpoint can be exploited for improving the existent anti-cancer therapeutic strategies. Our review focuses on the paradigm shift from ‘the Warburg effect’ to ‘the reverse Warburg effect’, the features and molecular mechanisms of ‘the reverse Warburg effect’, and then we discuss its significance in fundamental researches and clinical practice.
Semiconductor photocatalysis, a sustainable and renewable technology, is deemed to be a new path to resolve environmental pollution and energy shortage. The development of effective photocatalysts, especially the metal‐free photocatalysts, is a critical determinant of this technique. The recently emerged 2D material of black phosphorus with distinctive properties of tunable direct bandgap, ultrahigh charge mobility, fortified optical absorption, large specific surface area, and anisotropic structure has captured enormous attention since the first exfoliation of bulk black phosphorus into mono‐ or few layered phosphorene in 2014. In this article, the state‐of‐the‐art preparation methods are first summarized for bulk black phosphorus, phosphorene, and black phosphorus quantum dot and then the fundamental structure and electronic and optical properties are analyzed to evaluate its feasibility as a metal‐free photocatalyst. Various modifications on black phosphorus are also summarized to enhance its photocatalytic performance. Furthermore, the multifarious applications such as solar to energy conversion, organic removal, disinfection, nitrogen fixation, and photodynamic therapy are discussed and some of the future challenges and opportunities for black phosphorus research are proposed. This review reveals that the rising star of black phosphorus will be a multifunctional material in the postgraphene era.
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