Functional Textile Materials for Blocking COVID-19 Transmission

The outbreak of COVID-19 provided a warning sign for society worldwide: that is, we urgently need to explore effective strategies for combating unpredictable viral pandemics. Protective textiles such as surgery masks have played an important role in the mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic, while revealing serious challenges in terms of supply, cross-infection risk, and environmental pollution. In this context, textiles with an antivirus functionality have attracted increasing attention, and many innovative proposals with exciting commercial possibilities have been reported over the past three years. In this review, we illustrate the progress of textile filtration for pandemics and summarize the recent development of antiviral textiles for personal protective purposes by cataloging them into three classes: metal-based, carbon-based, and polymer-based materials. We focused on the preparation routes of emerging antiviral textiles, providing a forward-looking perspective on their opportunities and challenges, to evaluate their efficacy, scale up their manufacturing processes, and expand their high-volume applications. Based on this review, we conclude that ideal antiviral textiles are characterized by a high filtration efficiency, reliable antiviral effect, long storage life, and recyclability. The expected manufacturing processes should be economically feasible, scalable, and quickly responsive.

Heading perception from optic flow is affected by heading distribution

Recent studies have revealed a central tendency in the perception of physical features. That is, the perceived feature was biased toward the mean of recently experienced features (i.e., previous feature distribution). However, no study explored whether the central tendency was in heading perception or not. In this study, we conducted three experiments to answer this question. The results showed that the perceived heading was not biased toward the mean of the previous heading distribution, suggesting that the central tendency was not in heading perception. However, the perceived headings were overall biased toward the left side, where headings rarely appeared in the right-heavied distribution (Experiment 3), suggesting that heading perception from optic flow was affected by previously seen headings. It indicated that the participants learned the heading distributions and used them to adjust their heading perception. Our study revealed that heading perception from optic flow was not purely perceptual and that postperceptual stages (e.g., attention and working memory) might be involved in the heading perception from optic flow.

Efficacy and safety of FOLFIRINOX as second-line chemotherapy for advanced pancreatic cancer after gemcitabine-based therapy: A systematic review and meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE

To undertake a meta-analysis of the treatment effects of different second-line chemotherapy regimens compared with FOLFIRINOX (FOL [folinic acid], F [fluorouracil], IRIN [irinotecan], OX [oxaliplatin]) after failure of gemcitabine-based first-line therapy in patients with pancreatic cancer.

METHODS

This meta-analysis searched electronic databases, including Embase®, Medline, PubMed® and the Cochrane library, for eligible studies that reported the use of FOLFIRINOX and other drug regimens as second-line chemotherapy after failure of gemcitabine-based chemotherapy. Pooled analyses for progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), objective response rate (ORR), disease control rate (DCR) and grade 3/4 treatment-emergent adverse events (TRAEs) were undertaken.

RESULTS

The analysis included six studies with a total of 858 patients. Compared with the three other second-line regimens, FOLFIRINOX had a significantly longer PFS (hazard ratio [HR] 0.68, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.52, 0.89) and OS (HR 0.71, 95% CI 0.59, 0.86); and a significantly better ORR (HR 0.43, 95% CI 0.23, 0.80) and DCR (HR 0.71, 95% CI 0.58, 0.88). However, grade 3/4 adverse events were more frequently reported in patients administered FOLFIRINOX compared with the other three regimens.

CONCLUSION

FOLFIRINOX is recommended as a second-line chemotherapy regimen for patients with pancreatic cancer that have failed on gemcitabine-based first-line therapy.Research Registry number: reviewregistry1300.

Potential Use of Serum Proteomics for Monitoring COVID-19 Progression to Complement RT-PCR Detection

RT-PCR is the primary method to diagnose COVID-19 and is also used to monitor the disease course. This approach, however, suffers from false negatives due to RNA instability and poses a high risk to medical practitioners. Here, we investigated the potential of using serum proteomics to predict viral nucleic acid positivity during COVID-19. We analyzed the proteome of 275 inactivated serum samples from 54 out of 144 COVID-19 patients and shortlisted 42 regulated proteins in the severe group and 12 in the non-severe group. Using these regulated proteins and several key clinical indexes, including days after symptoms onset, platelet counts, and magnesium, we developed two machine learning models to predict nucleic acid positivity, with an AUC of 0.94 in severe cases and 0.89 in non-severe cases, respectively. Our data suggest the potential of using a serum protein-based machine learning model to monitor COVID-19 progression, thus complementing swab RT-PCR tests. More efforts are required to promote this approach into clinical practice since mass spectrometry-based protein measurement is not currently widely accessible in clinic.

Regulation Mechanism for the Binding between the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein and Host Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme II

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is mainly mediated through the interaction between the spike protein (S-pro) of the virus and the host angiotensin-converting enzyme II (ACE2). The attachment of heparan sulfate (HS) to S-pro is necessary for its binding to ACE2. In this study, the binding process of the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of S-pro to ACE2 was explored by enhanced sampling simulations. The free-energy landscape was characterized to elucidate the binding mechanism of S-pro to ACE2 with and without HS fragment DP4. We found that the stability of the T470-F490 loop and the hydrophobic interactions contributed from F486/Y489 in the T470-F490 loop of S-pro are quite crucial for the binding, which is enhanced by the presence of DP4. Our study provides valuable insights for rational drug design to prevent the invasion of SARS-CoV-2.

Attentional Blink Effects on S-Cone Stimuli

This study aimed to compare attentional blink (AB) effects on S-cone and on luminance stimuli. Recent research had revealed considerable AB effects not only on high-order visual areas but also on low-order visual areas. Therefore, whether AB formation occurred or not at primary visual cortex must be examined. Previous studies had reported the absence of attention modulation in an early koniocellular pathway driven by S-cone stimuli; therefore, the AB effects on S-cone stimuli would be a strong piece of evidence for late-stage hypothesis at least in the koniocellular pathway. For this study, 12 participants were instructed to identify a centrally presented target (T1) only or to identify either T1 or a peripheral target (T2). The targets were either luminance or S-cone stimuli. As expected, comparable AB effects on S-cone and luminance stimuli were observed. Findings suggested that AB formation through a koniocellular pathway must occur at a later cortical processing stage.