As one of the most common chronic diseases, there are nearly 400 million asthma patients worldwide, and more than 60 million asthma patients in China. In this concern, prevention and treatment of asthma is in the spotlight of public health and medical care issues. More than half of asthma patients are caused by type 2 immune response dominated by allergic-induced TH2 cells. Many immune cell components including eosinophils play important roles in allergic inflammation. The main pathological feat...

HSV-1 is an infectious pathogen that widely infects humans. Normally, it exists in the human body in a latent state., When it becomes active, it may cause many diseases such as cold sores, herpetic keratitis, neonatal herpes and encephalitis. An important feature of HSV-1 is that after infection of peripheral tissues, it enters neurons to undergo latent infection, thereby evading host immunity. When the host is immunocompromised or under stress, the latent virus reactivates to undergo recurrent ...

Tuberculosis (TB) is a pulmonary infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium (Mtb). According to the latest WHO report, there were more than 10 million new cases and 1.2 million deaths worldwide in 2019. China is a country with a high burden of TB. Effective prevention and control of TB in early stage is of great importance. However, current TB diagnosis methods and efficiency of medicine effects are far from satisfactoryThe research team led by LI Jicheng from the Zhejiang University School...

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) imaging technique is marked by its superb sensitivity, minimal background interference, and minimal damage to normal tissues for biomedical application. Moreover, the Raman probe has the advantages of high specificity and ultra-low signal interference, thus showing immense promise in the biomedical field. Due to its special application context, most of current researches are primarily focused on in vitro cancer diagnosis, which is confined to the diagnosi...

The nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), a protein complex that regulates gene transcription, is widely present in eukaryotic cells. It can specifically bind to promoters or enhancers to promote the transcription and expression of multiple genes. The NF-κB signaling pathway is closely bound up with the immune response and critical pathophysiological processes such as cell proliferation, transformation, and apoptosis. The classic NF-κB pathway is dominated by the role of IKKβ, which phosphorylates Iκ...

Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality. Chemotherapy is still the most commonly used treatment for cancer patients. It typically relies on drug endocytosis and inhibits tumor cell proliferation via intracellular pathways. However, most chemotherapy drugs damage normal cells since they work by affecting the physiological processes of cell proliferation. The side effects of systemic chemotherapy used to treat cancer are often severe and may damage the tumor‐bearing host, especially the i...

Acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) develops in patients with chronic liver diseases, regardless of the presence of cirrhosis and represents the common final pathway leading to death. The short-term mortality rate amounts to 50-90% due to the fact that the cause of hepatocyte injury and the pathway involved in ACLF progression remain elusive. The chronic liver failure (CLIF) Consortium Acute-On-Chronic Liver Failure in Cirrhosis (CANONIC) study indicated that an intense systemic inflammatory r...

China is a country with a high incidence of liver cancer. According to the Global Cancer Report, the number of liver cancer cases in China accounts for 46.7% of the total number of cases all over the world. Although appreciable progress in the treatment of HCC has occurred over the past few years, current therapeutic effects are far from satisfactory, and the 5‐year survival rate varies from 14% to 18%. Various kinase inhibitors, such as sorafenib and lenvatinib, come as an enormous boon to live...

For decades, transcription of bacteriophage T4 late genes has served as a model system to investigate mechanisms of transcription regulation. The T4 late promoters consist of a -10-like element placed at the position corresponding to the bacterial promoter -10 element. Nevertheless, there is no sequence conservation at the position corresponding to the bacterial promoter -35 element. In recent years, the research team led by Prof. FENG Yu from the Zhejiang University School of Medicine ...

Human diseases are caused by the interplay between intrinsic molecular dynamics and environmental exposures, which can be broadly defined as biological, chemical, physical and even psychological exposures. Abnormal environmental exposures, especially during early life, can lead to a variety of acute and chronic diseases, including cancer, allergy/asthma and autoimmune diseases. The ‘exposome’ was first proposed by Christopher Wild to encompass the totality of human environmental exposures from...