To evaluate the application of urinary metabolomics on discovering potential biomarkers for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), urine samples from 40 preoperative EOC patients, 62 benign ovarian tumor (BOT) patients, and 54 healthy controls were collected and analyzed with ultraperformance liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF/MS). Good separations were obtained for EOC vs BOT, EOC vs healthy controls analyzed by partial least-squares discriminant analysis, or principal component analysis. Twenty-two ascertained metabolomic biomarkers were found to be disturbed in several metabolic pathways among EOC patients, including nucleotide metabolism (pseudouridine, N4-acetylcytidine), histidine metabolism (L-histidine, imidazol-5-yl-pyruvate), tryptophan metabolism (3-indolelactic acid), and mucin metabolism (3'-sialyllactose and 3-sialyl-N-acetyllactosamine). In addition, the concentrations of some urinary metabolites of 18 postoperative EOC patients among the 40 EOC patients changed significantly compared with those of their preoperative condition, and four of them suggested recovery tendency toward normal level after surgical operation, including N4-acetylcytidine, pseudouridine, urate-3-ribonucleoside, and succinic acid. These metabolites would be highly postulated to be associated with EOC. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that urinary metabolomics analysis by UPLC-QTOF/MS, performed in a minimally noninvasive and convenient manner, possessed great potential in biomarker discovery for EOC.

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Black TiO2 nanobelts/g-C3N4 nanosheets laminated heterojunctions (b-TiO2/g-C3N4) as visible-light-driven photocatalysts are fabricated through a simple hydrothermal-calcination process and an in-situ solid-state chemical reduction approach, followed by the mild thermal treatment (350 °C) in argon atmosphere. The prepared samples are evidently investigated by X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, N2 adsorption, and UV-visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, respectively. The results show that special laminated heterojunctions are formed between black TiO2 nanobelts and g-C3N4 nanosheets, which favor the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Furthermore, the presence of Ti3+ and g-C3N4 greatly enhance the absorption of visible light. The resultant b-TiO2/g-C3N4 materials exhibit higher photocatalytic activity than that of g-C3N4, TiO2, b-TiO2 and TiO2/g-C3N4 for degradation of methyl orange (95%) and hydrogen evolution (555.8 μmol h−1 g−1) under visible light irradiation. The apparent reaction rate constant (k) of b-TiO2/g-C3N4 is ~9 times higher than that of pristine TiO2. Therefore, the high-efficient laminated heterojunction composites will have potential applications in fields of environment and energy.

Ti self-doped blue TiO(B) single-crystalline nanorods (b-TR) are fabricated via a simple sol-gelation method, cooperated with hydro-thermal treatment and subsequent in situ treatment method, and afterward annealed at 350 °C in Ar. The structures are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-vis), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The prepared b-TR with narrow band gap possesses single-crystalline TiO(B) phase, Ti self-doping, and one-dimensional (1D) rodlike nanostructure. In addition, the improved photocatalytic performance is studied by decomposition of Rhodamine B (RhB) and hydrogen evolution. The degradation rate of RhB by Ti self-doped blue TiO(B) single-crystalline nanorods is ∼6.9- and 2.1-times higher compared with the rates of titanium dioxide nanoparticles and pristine TiO(B) nanorods under visible light illumination, respectively. The hydrogen evolution rate of b-TR is 26.6 times higher compared with that of titanium dioxide nanoparticles under AM 1.5 irradiation. The enhanced photocatalytic performances arise from the synergetic action of the special TiO(B) phase, Ti self-doping, and the 1D rod-shaped single-crystalline nanostructure, favoring the visible light utilization and the separation and transportation of photogenerated charge carriers.

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