Chenchen Song

Over recent years, cell surface nucleolin as an anticancer target has attracted many researchers' attentions. To improve the antitumor efficacy, we developed a nucleolin targeted protein nanoparticle (NTPN) delivery system in which human serum albumin (HSA) was used as drug carrier and a DNA aptamer named AS1411, which had high affinity to nucleolin, was used as a bullet. The HSA nanoparticles (NPs-PTX) were fabricated by a novel self-assembly method and then modified with AS1411 (Apt-NPs-PTX). The resulted Apt-NPs-PTX were spherical. Compared with NPs-PTX, the uptake of Apt-NPs-PTX displayed a significant increase in MCF-7 cells while there was a decrease in nontumor cell lines such as MCF-10A and 3T3 cells. In a cytotoxic study, Apt-NPs-PTX displayed an enhanced cytotoxicity in MCF-7 tumor cells while there was almost no cytotoxicity in MCF-10A cells. Endostatin, a nucleolin inhibitor, could significantly decrease the internalization of Apt-NPs-PTX, suggesting nucleolin mediates the transmembrane process of Apt-NPs-PTX. Therefore, the AS1411 modified NTPN delivery system might be a promising targeted drug delivery system.

Some neural circuits operate with simple dynamics characterized by one or a few well-defined spatiotemporal scales (e.g. central pattern generators). In contrast, cortical neuronal networks often exhibit richer activity patterns in which all spatiotemporal scales are represented. Such "scale-free" cortical dynamics manifest as cascades of activity with cascade sizes that are distributed according to a power-law. Theory and in vitro experiments suggest that information transmission among cortical circuits is optimized by scale-free dynamics. In vivo tests of this hypothesis have been limited by experimental techniques with insufficient spatial coverage and resolution, i.e., restricted access to a wide range of scales. We overcame these limitations by using genetically encoded voltage imaging to track neural activity in layer 2/3 pyramidal cells across the cortex in mice. As mice recovered from anesthesia, we observed three changes: (a) cortical information capacity increased, (b) information transmission among cortical regions increased and (c) neural activity became scale-free. Our results demonstrate that both information capacity and information transmission are maximized in the awake state in cortical regions with scale-free network dynamics.