Jiqiang Zhang

Army Medical University (Third Military Medical University)

Background Trans-calcaneal suture technique is an economical and effective method for repairing Achilles tendon sleeve avulsion. Whether cancellous bone fixation upon this technique could accelerate tendon-to-bone healing is unknown. The purpose of this study is to compare the effect of cortical versus cancellous bone fixation on tendon–bone healin...

Previous studies have shown that ovarian estrogens are involved in the occurrence and pathology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) through regulation on hippocampal synaptic plasticity and spatial memory; however, the underlying mechanisms have not yet been elucidated at the genomic scale. In this study, we established the postmenopausal estrogen-deficien...

Introduction Tendon diseases and injuries are a serious problem for the aged population, often leading to pain, disability and a significant decline in quality of life. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of aging on biochemistry and histology during tendon healing and to provide a new strategy for improving tendon healing. Me...

The effects of steroid hormones are believed to be mediated by their nuclear receptors (NRs). The p160 coactivator family, including steroid receptor coactivator-1 (SRC-1), 2 and 3, has been shown to physically interact with NRs to enhance their transactivational activities. Among which SRC-1 has been predominantly localized in the central nervous...

Ovarian estrogens (mainly 17β estradiol, E2) have been involved in the regulation of the structure of hippocampus, the center of spatial memory. In recent years, high levels of aromatase (AROM), the estrogen synthase, has been localized in hippocampus; and this hippocampus-derived E2 seems to be functional in synaptic plasticity and spatial memory...

A20 is a potent anti-inflammatory protein that mediates both inflammation and ubiquitination in mammals, but the related mechanisms are not clear. In this study, we we performed mass spectrometry (MS) screening, gene ontology (GO) analysis, and coimmunoprecipitation (co-IP) in a lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory cell model to identify n...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak continues to spread rapidly around the world. By the end of 2020, there have been nearly 80 million confirmed cases and >1.7 million deaths associated with COVID-19 globally (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019), with an estimated mortality rate of 0.03%-40% (Wiersinga et...

Cognitive impairment is a common complication of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) that may be related to iron deposition in the brain. Hepcidin is expressed in the brain and has the ability to regulate iron. Therefore, this study explored the role of hepcidin in hippocampal iron deposition and cognitive impairment in T2DM. The effects of a recombina...

Follistatin-like protein 1 (FSTL1) showed overexpression in the inflammatory synovial pannus, serum, and synovial tissues of osteoarthritis (OA) patients. However, FSTL1 knock out (KO) embryos exhibited reduced vertebral cartilage cellularity, extensive skeleton defects and reduced MSCs proliferation. Thus, the role of FSTL1 in chondrocyte prolifer...

The treatment to tendon-to-bone interface injury has long been challenging in sports medicine. The major obstacle lies with the complicated three-layer structure of the tissue that consists of a bone region with osteocytes, a tendon region with tenocytes and a transitional region with chondrocytes. Conventional tissue engineering approaches using s...

The increasing occurrence and ineffective treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has become one of the major challenges of the world. Limited studies have shown that serum- and glucocorticoid-inducible kinase 1 (SGK1) is involved in spatial memory formation and consolidation, but its role in AD-like spatial memory impairment and the related mechanis...

Tendinopathy is a common musculoskeletal system disorder in sports medicine, but regeneration ability of injury tendon is limited. Tendon stem cells (TSCs) have shown the definitive treatment evidence for tendinopathy and tendon injuries due to their tenogenesis capacity. Aspirin, as the representative of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for it...

Tendon injury repairs are big challenges in sports medicine, and fatty infiltration after tendon injury is very common and hampers tendon injury healing process. Tendon stem cells (TSCs), as precursors of tendon cells, have shown promising effect on injury tendon repair for their tenogenesis and tendon extracellular matrix formation. Adipocytes and...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia in the elderly, characterized by amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). Synaptic plasticity impairment is one of the early pathological events in AD. Transgenic APP/PS1 mice that overproduce Aβ are one of the most extensively used AD animal models. Many studies...

Objectively: Tendinopathy is a common problem in sports medicine which can lead to severe morbidity. Aspirin, as the classical representative of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for its anti-inflammatory and analgesic actions, has been commonly used in treating tendinopathy. While its treatment effects on injury tendon healing are la...

Tendon injuries are common musculoskeletal system disorders in clinical, but the regeneration ability of tendon is limited. Tendon stem cells (TSCs) have shown promising effect on tissue engineering and been used for the treatment of tendon injury. Exosomes that serve as genetic information carriers have been implicated in many diseases and physiol...

Estrogens (E2) derived from ovaries and/or local de novo synthesis in the hippocampus profoundly regulate hippocampal structure and function, but the importance of local E2 versus ovarian E2 on hippocampal synaptic plasticity and spatial memory has not been well elucidated. The present study used ovariectomy (OVX) and intraperitoneal injection of a...

Aims The G‐protein‐coupled estrogen receptor GPR30 (also referred to as GPER) has been implicated in the estrogenic regulation of hippocampal plasticity and spatial memory; however, the molecular mechanisms are largely unclear. Methods In this study, we initially examined the levels of GPR30 in the hippocampus of postnatal, ovariectomy (OVX)‐ and...

Estrogens have been shown to play profound roles in the regulation of the structure and function of the hippocampus; however, the underlying mechanism is not clear. Previous studies have shown that when Rictor, the core component of the mammalian target of the rapamycin complex 2 (mTORC2), was deleted, hippocampal actin polymerization was reduced a...

Background/Aims: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are commonly used in clinical practice to relieve fever and pain. Aspirin, as a representative NSAID, has been widely used in the treatment of tendinopathy. Some reports have demonstrated that aspirin can induce apoptosis in cancer cells. However, evidence regarding aspirin treatment f...

Steroids affect normal and pathological functions of the liver through receptors, which require coactivators for their transcriptional activation. Steroid receptor coactivator (SRC)-1 and SRC-3 have been demonstrated to be regulated in numerous cancers; however, their expression profiles in liver cancer including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and...

Front cover: The cover image, by Fang‐Zhou Xing et al., is based on the Original Article Nuclear and membrane estrogen receptor antagonists induce similar mTORC2 activation‐reversible changes in synaptic protein expression and actin polymerization in the mouse hippocampus, DOI: 10.1111/cns.12806. Illustration credit: Jiqiang Zhang, Fang‐zhou Xing.

The transcription factor neuron-restrictive silencer factor (NRSF), also termed repressor element 1-silencing transcription factor (REST), has been previously demonstrated to repress the expression of neuronal genes in non-neuronal cells, facilitating the controlled development and organization of nerve tissue. However, previous studies have report...

Steroids have been demonstrated to play profound roles in the regulation of hippocampal function by acting on their receptors, which need coactivators for their transcriptional activities. Previous studies have shown that steroid receptor coactivator-1 (SRC-1) is the predominant coactivator in the hippocampus, but its exact role and the underlying...

Aims: Estrogens play pivotal roles in hippocampal synaptic plasticity through nuclear receptors (nERs; including ERα and ERβ) and the membrane receptor (mER; also called GPR30), but the underlying mechanism and the contributions of nERs and mER remain unclear. Mammalian target of rapamycin complex 2 (mTORC2) is involved in actin cytoskeleton polym...

Objective: The neural functional recovery of female is often better than that of male after spinal cord injury (SCI). Evidences show that estrogen can attenuate inflammation and promote the neural survival and regeneration after SCI. SRC-1 is an essential initiation factor for the estrogen-regulated target gene transcription and plays a key role i...

Aging-related decline of estrogens, especially 17β-estradiol (E2), has been shown to play an important role in the impairment of learning and memory in dementias, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but the underlying molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. In this study, we first demonstrated decreases in E2 signaling (aromatase, classic estroge...

Objective: To explore the effect of different intensity treadmill training on the repair of micro-injured Achilles tendon induced by collagenase in rats. Methods: Seventy-two 8-week-old male Sprague Dawley rats (weighing, 200-250 g) were selected. After adaptive treadmill training for 1 week, rats were injected with 30 μL type I collagenase solu...

Objective: To investigate the effects of different mechanical stretch conditions on the differentiation of rat tendon stem cells (TSCs), to find the best uniaxial cyclic stretching for TSCs tenogenic differentiation, osteogenic differentiation, and adipogenic differentiation. Methods: TSCs were isolated from the Achilles tendons of 8-week-old ma...

During neurogenesis, specific transcription factors are needed to repress neuronal genes in nonneuronal cells to ensure precise development. Repressor element-1 binding transcription factor (REST), or neuron-restrictive silencer factor (NRSF), has been shown to be an important regulator for the establishment of neuronal specificity. It restricts th...

The central noradrenergic system participates in diverse nervous functions. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the action of adrenoceptors in motor regulation is still lacking. Intriguingly, reticulospinal neurons in the caudal pontine reticular nucleus (PnC) receive fairly dense noradrenergic innervation and play an important role in motor control. He...

Previous studies have shown that iron redistribution and deposition in the brain occurs in some neurodegenerative diseases, and oxidative damage due to abnormal iron level is a primary cause of neuronal death. In the present study, we used the single prolonged stress (SPS) model to mimic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and examined whether i...

The aim of this study was to compare the capacity of tendon stem cells (TSCs) and bone-marrow stem cells (BMSCs) to promote tendon-bone repair to screen for seed cells that better promote tendon-bone healing. The properties of these two types of cells that were relevant for the repair of the tendon-bone interface were compared in vitro. The results...

Background/aims: Dexamethasone (Dex)-induced spontaneous tendon rupture and decreased self-repair capability is very common in clinical practice. The metaplasia of adipose tissue in the ruptured tendon indicates that Dex may induce tendon stem cells (TSCs) to differentiate into adipocytes, but the mechanism remains unclear. In the present study, w...

Hippocampus local estrogen which is converted from androgen that catalyzed by aromatase has been shown to play important roles in the regulation of learning and memory as well as cognition through action on synaptic plasticity, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Steroid receptor coactivator-1 (SRC-1) is one of the coactivator of s...

Tendinopathy is a common sports injury that is manifested by the heterotopic ossification of tendon tissue. Tendon stem cells (TSCs) are prone to osteogenic differentiation under excessive tension. The underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Uniaxial mechanical tension (UMT) served to stretch rat tendon-derived stem cells (rTDSCs) at 8% elo...

Glucocorticoid-induced tendon rupture is very common in clinical practice, and the overall outcome of surgical suture repair is rather poor. The mechanism remains unclear, and effective treatments are still lacking. In the present study, we investigated the effect of dexamethasone on the differentiation of rat tendon stem cells (TSCs) to tenocytes...

Steroid receptors such as androgen receptor (AR) and estrogen receptors (ER) ER-α and ER-β, and their receptor coactivators (steroid receptor coactivator, SRC) are widely localized in the brain. Although previous studies have investigated the expression of steroid receptors in brain tumors like astrocytoma, the studies on the expression of steroid...

Tendon calcification is common in the Achilles tendon, and injuries affect not only athletes, but also the general population. However, the underlying cellular mechanisms are not yet fully understood. In this study, we isolated healthy human tenocytes and subjected them to uniaxial mechanical stretching (at 1.0 Hz) for various stretch times (4 h, 8...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are non-coding single-stranded RNAs in eukaryotes and are involved in the regulation of the post-transcriptional expression of specific genes. Studies have demonstrated that miRNAs play important roles in regul-ating diverse physiological events such as cell proliferation, differentiation and embryo development. In recent decades...

Astrocytic tumors are the most common primary brain tumors. It has been reported that androgen receptor (AR), estrogen receptors alpha (ERα) and beta (ERβ) and their coactivator SRC-1 and SRC-3 are involved in the regulation of the growth and development of many tumors, but their expression profiles and significances in the astrocytic tumors remain...

Accumulated studies have shown that 17β-estradiol (E2) can be de novo synthesized in the hippocampus, and its role in the regulation of hippocampal synaptic plasticity, which is the basis of learning and memory, has long been exploring. Steroidogenic enzymes (e.g., aromatase) that are essential to the hippocampus-synthesized synthesis of E2 have be...

Radiotherapy and chemotherapeutic agents that damage DNA are the current major non-surgical means of treating cancer. However, many patients develop resistances to chemotherapy drugs in their later lives. The PI3K and Ras signaling pathways are deregulated in most cancers, so molecularly targeting PI3K-Akt or Ras-MAPK signaling sensitizes many canc...

The relationship between Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) genotype and the risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is relatively well established in Caucasians, but less established in other ethnicities. To examine the association between ApoE polymorphism and the onset of AD in Chinese population, we searched the commonly used electronic databases between January...

As one of the third generation of aromatase inhibitors, letrozole is a favored drug for the treatment of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer with some adverse effects on the nervous system, but the knowledge is limited and the results are controversial, the mechanism underlying its central action is also unclear. Accumulated evidences have demo...

The purpose of the present work was to examine in vitro corrosion and bioactivity of surface phytic acid treatment AZ31 magnesium alloys. Untreated AZ31 magnesium alloys were used as control. The surface morphologies of magnesium alloys were observed by SEM. EDS was used to analyze the surface chemical elemental compositions and elemental concentra...

The activation of a complement system can aggravate the secondary injury after spinal cord injury (SCI). However, it was reported recently that the activation of a complement could have both a secondary injury and a neuroprotective effect, in which C5a is the most important factor. But there is no direct evidence for this dual effect of C5a after S...

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for women worldwide. Various therapeutic approaches have been proposed, among which endocrine therapy has recently become popular due to the high sensitivity of breast tissues to steroids such as estrogens and progesterone. The underlying mechanisms of steroid regulation in breast cancer cell proli...

To analyze the short-term effectiveness of repairing musculus extensor carpi radialis brevis (ECRB) and extensor digitorum communis (EDC) tendon using suture anchor after debridement of extensor tendon insertion for recalcitrant lateral epicondylitis. Between March 2009 and May 2011, 10 patients (10 elbows) with recalcitrant lateral epicondylitis r...

The activation of complement system can aggravate the secondary injury after spinal cord injury (SCI). Our previous study indicates that the interception of complement activation by C3 deficiency can reduce the secondary injury and improve the regeneration and functional recovery after SCI. However, recently it was reported that C5a which was gener...

Hippocampus is one of the most important structures that mediates learning and memory, cognition, and mental behaviors and profoundly regulated by sex hormones in a sex-specific manner, but the mechanism of underlying sex differences regulation is still unclear. We have previously reported that in the male and female mice, steroid receptor coactiva...

Rab GTPases have emerged as central regulators of vesicle trafficking and are essential for cytokine production during the pathogenesis of neuroinflammation. To characterize the roles of different Rab proteins in brain inflammation, we used quantitative PCR (qPCR) to examine the expression profiles of all members of the Rab family in an experimenta...

Secreted phospholipase A₂-IIA (sPLA₂-IIA) is an inducible enzyme released under several inflammatory conditions. It has been shown that sPLA₂-IIA is released from rat brain astrocytes after inflammatory stimulus, and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and nitric oxide (NO) have been implicated in regulation of this release. Here, brain microvascular endothel...

TIR-domain-containing adapter-inducing interferon-β (TRIF) is the sole downstream adaptor of Toll-like receptor (TLR)3, which is one of the major signaling pathways in immune cells leading to neuroinflammation in the central nervous system. Overexpression of TRIF may lead to activation of inflammatory responses, and contribute to pathophysiological...

The structure and function including synaptic plasticity of the hippocampus are deeply affected by steroids in a sex-dependant manner, these processes are believed to be mediated by steroid receptors though their coactivators. Our previous studies have reported the developmental profiles of steroid receptor coactivator-1 (SRC-1) and PSD-95 in the h...

Previous studies have shown that steroid receptor coactivator-1 (SRC-1) is involved in the regulation of Purkinje cell development and motor learning, neural stem cell differentiation and reproductive-related plasticity. It is widely distributed in the adult brain, but the aging-related changes in the brain remain unclear. In this study age-related...

Female steroids such as estrogens and progestins, through their nuclear receptors, play important roles in regulation of the structure and function of the hippocampus. Steroid receptor coactivator-1 (SRC-1) has been detected in embryonic and/or adult hippocampus of rodents, and SRC-1 null mice showed significantly longer escape latency in the Morri...

Females and males are different in brain and behaviors. These differences are mediated by steroids and their nuclear receptors which require coactivators to regulate the transcription of target genes. Studies have shown that these coactivators are critical for modulating steroid hormone action in the brain. Steroid receptor coactivator-1 has been i...

Steroid receptor coactivator-3 (SRC-3) has been reported to be overexpressed in the development and progression of many tumor types. SRC-3 has been detected in several lung cancer cell lines, but its expression and clinical significance in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remain unclear. In this study, 48 NSCLC tissues were collected and tissue m...

Inflammation can activate the complement system, which in turn enhances inflammation and aggravates secondary injury after spinal cord injury (SCI). As the three complement activation pathways converge at the cleavage of C3, we investigated whether inhibiting complement activation in C3-deficient mice would reduce secondary injury after SCI and imp...

Postsynaptic density protein-95 (PSD-95) is hypothesized to control the excitatory-to-inhibitory ratio and plays an important role in the regulation of hippocampal synaptic plasticity, synaptogenesis, and learning and memory. In this report, we used immunoblotting to study the effects of aging and ovariectomy (OVX) on the expression of PSD-95 in th...

To study the role that the novel nongenomic membranous estrogen receptor GPR30 plays in the hippocampal synaptic plasticity, the developmental profile and subcellular localization of GPR30 in the hippocampus of postnatal female rats was examined by nickel-intensified immunohistochemistry and immunoelectronic microscopy. Results showed that the immu...

Spinal motoneurons (SMNs) were co-cultured with labeled superior cervical ganglion neurons (SCGNs) in complete medium on coverslips prepared by the microisland technique. "Hybrid" synapses formation between SMNs and SCGNs was examined by double immunostaining, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and electrophysiological assays...

To determine the mechanisms involved in regulating the balance between apoptosis and survival in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC), we studied anti-apoptotic stimuli that can counteract pro-apoptotic events in the process of early atherosclerotic lesions formation. Such a process involves VSMC accumulation even in the presence of oxidized low den...

Increased expression of the IGF-I receptor (IGF-IR) is associated with proliferation and survival of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). In cultured VSMCs, we reported that angiotensin II (Ang II) increases transcription and expression of IGF-IR. Now, we show that mesenteric arteries of rats infused with Ang II develop thickening and increased IG...

Activation of nuclear factor (NF)-kappaB by angiotensin II (Ang II) plays an essential role in stimulating expression of vascular adhesion molecules, which are essential for vascular inflammation. We report that Ang II activates NF-kappaB by phosphorylating its p65 subunit via a pathway mediated partially by ribosomal S6 kinase (RSK). In investigat...

Angiotensin II (Ang II) promotes vascular inflammation and remodeling via activation of nuclear factor kappaB (NF-kappaB)-mediated transcription of proinflammatory genes such as interleukin-6 (IL-6). We examined the signaling mechanism whereby Ang II activates NF-kappaB in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). Ang II treatment did not increase phos...

Previous studies have shown that estrogen receptor beta (ERbeta) is the predominant estrogen receptor in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of mouse, mediating estrogen regulation of the neuroendocrine activities of the PVN, but the exact roles that ERbeta plays in the PVN remain unclear. In this study, we used immunocytochemistry to in...

Studies have shown that estrogen plays important roles in regulating neural structure and function in the brain, but the mechanism remains unclear. The actions of estrogen were thought to be mediated by a single estrogen receptor until the identification of another estrogen receptor, namely estrogen receptor-beta (ER-beta). Here we report a compreh...

Aromatase catalyzes the conversion of androgen to estrogen. This enzyme has been primarily localized in the neurons of specific areas of limbic system and hypothalamus of the brain. Astrocytes may also express this enzyme. Studies show that the gene expression of aromatase is driven by multiple tissue-specific exons, and the effective concentration...