DNA vaccination is a promising cancer treatment due to its safety, but poor immunogenicity limits its application. However, immunoadjuvants, heterogeneous prime-boost strategies and combination with conventional treatments can be used to improve the antitumour immune effects. A CpG motif and interleukin-2 (IL-2) cytokine are often used as adjuvants. In this study, a DNA vaccine containing a CpG motif was constructed to evaluate its adjuvant effect. The results show that the cytotoxicity of the DNA vaccine was increased fivefold, and survival lifetime was prolonged twofold by the CpG motif adjuvant. To simplify the industrial production process, a bicistronic plasmid was constructed to carry the fusion genes of survivin/MUC1 (MS) and IL-2 and with a CpG motif in its backbone. The results showed that the antitumour effect of the bicistronic vaccine was the same as that of the two vaccine co-injected regime. Furthermore, the vaccine could suppress metastatic tumour foci by 69.1% in colorectal carcinoma-bearing mice. Moreover, the vaccine induced survivin- and MUC1-specific immune responses in splenocytes and induced the immune promoting factor CCL-19 and GM-CSF upregulated, while metastatic-associated factor MMP-9 and immunosuppressing factor PD-L1 downregulated in tumour tissue. When combining the vaccine with the chemotherapy drug oxaliplatin, the survival was prolonged by about 2.5-fold. In conclusion, the DNA vaccine containing a CpG motif in bicistronic form showed good effects on colorectal cancer by inhibiting both tumour growth and metastasis, and combination with oxaliplatin could improve its antitumour effects.

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A miniature piezoelectric-driven fatigue device with three degrees of freedom is developed. The device integrates two fatigue testing functions, including uniaxial tensile fatigue and tensile-bending combined loading modes. The synchronous tensile-bending loading principle is described, which is applicable for calculating the vector displacements along two orthogonal directions and investigating the anisotropic fatigue properties. Regarding the combined loading mode, maximum load/displacement amplitudes for tensile and bending vector components that could be achieved are 16.9 N/22.8 µm and 3.3 N/5.6 µm, respectively. Based on tensile and tensile-bending combined fatigue loading modes, the displacement responses and fatigue lives at loading frequencies ranging from 1 Hz to 100 Hz are valuated experimentally to indicate the validation.

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The aggregation efficiency of colloidal kaolin particles by the turbulence caused by random movement of silica gel beads in a cylindrical (CFB) and an 8 degrees conical fluidized bed (TFB) was studied in this paper, focusing on the control strategies of these novel processes. The abatement efficiencies as a function of the Camp number, velocity gradient (G) and flocculation time (T) were exploited. In general, the abatement efficiency tended to be improved with the increase of Camp number (in the study range of this work: Camp number lower than 8058 and 5639 in CFB and TFB, respectively). However, the efficiency was relatively low and sensitive to the Camp number as G was more than 186 s⁻¹ in CFB and 178 s⁻¹ in TFB, respectively. Whereas, increasing flocculation time clearly contributed to the improvement of the abatement efficiency, which is considered to be an effective strategy to enhance the treatment ability. Velocity gradient and flocculation time could be controlled by means of superficial liquid velocity and properties of packing particles. It should be noted that the backmixing in the TFB caused formed flocs to break and thus lower abatement efficiencies were found in the TFB than those in the CFB.