Vol 30, No 25 (2024)

:Organ-on-chip is an innovative technique that emerged from tissue engineering and microfluidic technologies. Organ-on-chip devices (OoCs) are anticipated to provide efficient explanations for dealing with challenges in pharmaceutical advancement and individualized illness therapies. Organ-on-chip is an advanced method that can replicate human organs' physiological conditions and functions on a small chip. It possesses the capacity to greatly transform the drug development process by enabling the simulation of diseases and the testing of drugs. Effective integration of this advanced technical platform with common pharmaceutical and medical contexts is still a challenge. Microfluidic technology, a micro-level technique, has become a potent tool for biomedical engineering research. As a result, it has revolutionized disciplines, including physiological material interpreting, compound detection, cell-based assay, tissue engineering, biological diagnostics, and pharmaceutical identification. This article aims to offer an overview of newly developed organ-on-a-chip systems. It includes single-organ platforms, emphasizing the most researched organs, including the heart, liver, blood arteries, and lungs. Subsequently, it provides a concise overview of tumor-on-a-chip systems and emphasizes their use in evaluating anti-cancer medications.

Background:EP300 (E1A binding protein p300) played a significant role in serial diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative disease. Therefore, it became a significant target.

Methods:Targeting EP300 discovery of a novel drug to alleviate these diseases. In this paper, 17 candidate compounds were obtained using a structure-based virtual screening approach, 4449-0460, with an IC50 of 5.89 ± 2.08 uM, which was identified by the EP300 bioactivity test. 4449-0460 consisted of three rings. The middle benzene ring connected the 5-ethylideneimidazolidine-2,4-dione group and the 3-F-Phenylmethoxy group.

Results:Furthermore, the interaction mechanism between 4449-0460 and EP300 was explored by combining molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and binding free energy calculation methods.

Conclusion:The binding free energy of EP300 with 4449-0460 was -10.93 kcal/mol, and mainly came from the nonpolar energy term (ΔGnonpolar). Pro1074, Phe1075, Val1079, Leu1084, and Val1138 were the key residues in EP300/4449-0460 binding with more -1 kcal/mol energy contribution. 4449-0460 was a promising inhibitor targeting EP300, which had implications for the development of drugs for EP300-related diseases.

Background:Colorectal Cancer (CRC) is one of the top three malignancies with the highest incidence and mortality.

Objective:The study aimed to identify the effect of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) on postoperative patients with stage II-III CRC and explore the core herb combination and its mechanism.

Methods:An observational cohort study was conducted on patients diagnosed with stage II-III CRC from January 2016 to January 2021. The primary outcome was disease-free survival, which was compared between the patients who received TCM or not, and the secondary outcome was the hazard ratio. The relevance principle was used to obtain the candidate herb combinations, and the core combination was evaluated through an assessment of efficacy and representativeness. Then, biological processes and signaling pathways associated with CRC were obtained by Gene Ontology function, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Gene and Genomes pathway, and Wikipathway. Furthermore, hub genes were screened by the Kaplan-Meier estimator, and molecular docking was employed to predict the binding sites of key ingredients to hub genes. The correlation analysis was employed for the correlations between the hub genes and tumor-infiltrating immune cells and hypoxiarelated genes. Ultimately, a quantitative polymerase chain reaction was performed to verify the regulation of hub genes by their major ingredients.

Results:A total of 707 patients were included. TCM could decrease the metastatic recurrence associated with stage II-III CRC (HR: 0.61, log-rank p < 0.05). Among those patients in the TCM group, the core combination was Baizhu → Yinchen, Chenpi, and Fuling (C combination), and its antitumor mechanism was most likely related to the regulation of BCL2L1, XIAP, and TOP1 by its key ingredients, quercetin and tangeretin. The expression of these genes was significantly correlated with both tumor-infiltrating immune cells and hypoxia- related genes. In addition, quercetin and tangeretin down-regulated the mRNA levels of BCL2L1, XIAP, and TOP1, thereby inhibiting the growth of HCT116 cells.

Conclusion:Overall, a combination of four herbs, Baizhu → Yinchen, Chenpi, and Fuling, could reduce metastatic recurrence in postoperative patients with stage II-III CRC. The mechanism may be related to the regulation of BCL2L1, XIAP, and TOP1 by its key ingredients quercetin and tangeretin.