A rapid and sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass chromatography (LC-MS/MS) method has been developed and validated for simultaneous determination of catalpol and harpagide in rat plasma. The samples were extracted by one-step protein precipitation and separated on a SunFireTM C 18 column (100 mm × 2.1 mm, 3.5 μm; Waters) using acetonitrile-10 mM ammonium formate as mobile phase at a flow rate 0.3 mL/min in gradient mode. The analytes were detected without interference in Multiple Reaction Monitoring (MRM) mode with negative electrospray ionization. Linear responses were obtained for catalpol ranging from 20 to 5000 ng/mL and harpagide ranging from 10 to 2500 ng/mL. Coefficients of correlation (r) for the calibration curves were more than 0.99 for both analytes. Intra-and inter-day accuracy and precision were within the acceptable limits of less than 15.0% at all concentrations. The quantitation method was successfully applied for simultaneous estimation of catalpol and harpagide after oral administration of Zeng Ye Decoction.

Porphyran, which structure is similar with carrageenan and agarose, has application potential in drug form developmentas a new pharmaceutical material. Orthogonal experiment was employed to optimizethe porphyran extraction conditions from porphyra yezoensis. The extraction temperature, pH, ratio of liquid to raw material and extraction time were confirmed as 90°C, 11, 30:1 and 3h, respectively.The polysaccharide structure detected by IR spectra was consistent with porphyran, which was suitable for gel formulation preparation.

Background: Folate-receptor alpha (FRα) is overexpressed in lung carcinoma. The FR-positive circulating tumor cell (FR+ CTC) has been established to be a non-invasive biomarker for lung cancer diagnosis. In this study, we sought to examine the value of FR+ CTC in the histological diagnosis of suspicious spaceoccupying pulmonary lesions.Methods: A total of 538 patients with suspicious space-occupying pulmonary lesions were enrolled in this study. FR+ CTCs were detected before treatment initiation using negative enrichment and ligand-targeted polymerase chain reaction assays. The enrolled patients concurrently received serum biomarker tests.Results: A total of 282 lung cancer patients [163 with adenocarcinoma (ADC), 71 with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and 48 with small cell lung cancer (SCLC)], and 256 patients with benign disease who concurrently received FR+ CTC and serum biomarker tests were randomly assigned to a training set and a validation set. The FR+ CTC levels of patients with lung cancer were significantly higher than those of patients with benign disease (P<0.001). Compared to serum tumor biomarkers alone, the model combining FR+ CTC and serum biomarkers had the highest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in the diagnosis of NSCLC, ADC, SCC, and SCLC.Conclusions: Diagnostic models that include both FR+ CTC and serum biomarkers could increase the efficiency of distinguishing between different histological types of lung cancer and benign space-occupying pulmonary diseases.

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Abstract:The objective of this study was to investigate the use of cationized Pleurotus eryngii polysaccharide (CPEPS) as a nonviral gene delivery vehicle to transfer plasmid DNA encoding transforming growth factor beta-1 (pTGF-β1) into mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in vitro. Crude P. eryngii polysaccharide was purified, and then cationized by grafting spermine onto the backbone of the polysaccharide. Agarose gel electrophoresis, transmission electron microscopy, and a Nano Sense Zetasizer (Malvern Instruments, Malvern, UK) were used to characterize the CPEPS-pTGF-β1 nanoparticles. The findings of cytotoxicity analysis showed that when the nanoparticles were formulated with a CPEPS/pTGF-β1 weight ratio $ 10:1, a greater gel retardation effect was observed during agarose gel electrophoresis. The CPEPS-pTGF-β1 nanoparticles with a weight ratio of 20:1, respectively, possessed an average particle size of 80.8 nm in diameter and a zeta potential of +17.4 ± 0.1 mV. Significantly, these CPEPS-pTGF-β1 nanoparticles showed lower cytotoxicity and higher transfection efficiency than both polyethylenimine (25 kDa) (P = 0.006, Student's t-test) and Lipofectamine TM 2000(P = 0.002, Student's t-test). Additionally, the messenger RNA expression level of TGF-β1 in MSCs transfected with CPEPS-pTGF-β1 nanoparticles was significantly higher than that of free plasmid DNA-transfected MSCs and slightly elevated compared with that of Lipofectamine 2000-transfected MSCs. Flow cytometry analysis demonstrated that 92.38% of MSCs were arrested in the G1 phase after being transfected with CPEPS-pTGF-β1 nanoparticles, indicating a tendency toward differentiation. In summary, the findings of this study suggest that the CPEPS-pTGF-β1 nanoparticles prepared in this work exhibited excellent transfection efficiency and low toxicity. Therefore, they could be developed into a promising nonviral vector for gene delivery in vitro.