Cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of death worldwide and cardiac fibrosis is a common pathological process for cardiac remodeling in cardiovascular diseases. Cardiac fibrosis not only accelerates the deterioration progress of diseases but also becomes a pivotal contributor for futile treatment in clinical cardiovascular trials. Although cardiac fibrosis is common and prevalent, effective medicines to provide sufficient clinical intervention for cardiac fibrosis are still unavailable. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is the natural essence experienced boiling, fry, and other processing methods, including active ingredients, extracts, and herbal formulas, which have been applied to treat human diseases for a long history. Recently, research has increasingly focused on the great potential of TCM for the prevention and treatment of cardiac fibrosis. Here, we aim to clarify the identified pro-fibrotic mechanisms and intensively summarize the application of TCM in improving cardiac fibrosis by working on these mechanisms. Through comprehensively analyzing, TCM mainly regulates the following pathways during ameliorating cardiac fibrosis: attenuation of inflammation and oxidative stress, inhibition of cardiac fibroblasts activation, reduction of extracellular matrix accumulation, modulation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, modulation of autophagy, regulation of metabolic-dependent mechanisms, and targeting microRNAs. We also discussed the deficiencies and the development direction of anti-fibrotic therapies on cardiac fibrosis. The data reviewed here demonstrates that TCM shows a robust effect on alleviating cardiac fibrosis, which provides us a rich source of new drugs or drug candidates. Besides, we also hope this review may give some enlightenment for treating cardiac fibrosis in clinical practice.

At present, melanoma is a common malignant tumor with the highest mortality rate of all types of skin cancer. Although the first option for treating melanoma is with chemicals, the effects are unsatisfactory and include poor medication response and high resistance. Therefore, developing new medicines or a novel combination approach would be a significant breakthrough. Here, we present cinnamaldehyde (CA) as a potential candidate, which exerted an antitumor effect in melanoma cell lines. Chemical biology methods of target fishing, molecular imaging, and live cell tracing by an alkynyl–CA probe revealed that the α-enolase (ENO1) protein was the target of CA. The covalent binding of CA with ENO1 changed the stability of the ENO1 protein and affected the glycolytic activity. Furthermore, our results demonstrated that dacarbazine (DTIC) showed a high promoting effect with CA for antimelanoma both in vivo and in vitro. The combination improved the DTIC cell cycle arrest in the S phase and markedly impacted melanoma growth. As a covalent inhibitor of ENO1, CA combined with DTIC may be beneficial in patients with drug resistance in antimelanoma therapy.

Introduction: The widespread use of organophosphorus pesticides (OPs) in Chinese herbal medicines cultivation raises urgent concerns about residue contamination. Conventional detection methods [e.g., gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)] suffer from poor portability and instability of antibody inactivation in complex matrices, hindering on-site analysis. Methods: This study proposed a novel “electrostatic adsorption-driven cascade reaction chain” strategy for rapid detection of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity and OPs. Leveraging the electrostatic self-assembly between a positively charged acetylcholine chloride (ACh, 26.47 ± 1.63 mV) and a negatively charged choline oxidase (CHO, −30.81 ± 1.85 mV), a nanoscale fluorescence sensor (CA-B NPs) was constructed by encapsulating the Azo-Bodipy 685. This design created a spatially confined and componentially co-localized nanoreactor that restricted substrate diffusion distance to the nanoscale and utilized a dual-enzyme cascade system (AChE-CHO) to yield a signal amplification effect. Results: The obtained CA-B NPs exhibited excellent analytical performance, including: (1) a low detection limit of 4.1 ng/mL for triazophos; (2) high recovery of 88.13%−113.09% in complex Citrus reticulata Blanco matrices, along with strong anti-interference capabilities by organically dividing the reaction and detection sections; (3) a total assay time of only 20 min for real samples, suitable for rapid, on-site, high-throughput screening. Discussion: This study not only embedded the entire reaction chain [AChE-CHO-hydrogen peroxide (H ₂ O ₂ )] into the sensor to improve space utilization efficiency and detection efficiency, but also established a novel paradigm for enzyme spatial organization based on electrostatic complementarity, providing new insights into the rational design of nanostructured multi-enzyme sensing platforms.

In recent years, the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China has been effectively controlled by implementing national prevention and control measures. However, a large number of recovered patients are plagued by fatigue, whether acute or chronic, and other fatigue-related syndromes that severely affect their quality of life. Post-viral fatigue syndrome (PVFS) is a widespread chronic neurological disease with no definite etiological factor(s), definitive diagnostic test, or approved pharmacological treatment, therapy, or cure. In this study, we performed a bibliometric analysis and the results suggested that neuroinflammation played a role in the development of PVFS. Therefore, we briefly analyzed the mechanisms underlying the development of neuroinflammation in patients with COVID-19. To identify effective drugs to alleviate PVSF, we summarized four traditional herbal phytoadaptations and discussed their molecular mechanisms in improving neurological fatigue. Our study showed that ginseng, Acanthopanax, Rhodiola, and Schisandra played beneficial roles in alleviating PVSF. Graphical http://links.lww.com/AHM/A45.