Zehuan Liao

Nanyang Technological University | ntu · School of Biological Sciences

Available evidence suggest that exposure to PM2.5 during pregnancy is associated with reduced cognitive function in offspring. This study aimed to investigate the effects of maternal exposure to PM2.5 on offspring cognitive function and to elucidate the underlying mechanisms. In this work, pregnant C57BL/6 female mice were exposed to concentrated a...

Ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposures during pregnancy could lead to adverse birth outcomes, including neurobehavioral development defects. However, limited studies explored the effects and potential epigenetic mechanisms of maternal PM2.5 exposure on offspring spatial memory defects. This study aims to explore the effects and underlyin...

Cancer is complicated to treat because of its high propensity for recurrence and metastasis, and various side effects of conventional cancer treatments. With the development of nanotechnology, biology, material science and pharmacy, nanoparticles emerge as a promising method to load anti-cancer drugs to deal with the downsides of conventional treat...

Single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) is one of the most used single-cell omics in recent decades. The exponential growth of single-cell data has immense potential for large-scale integration and in-depth explorations that are more representative of the study population. Efforts have been made to consolidate published data, yet extensive character...

Children/adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) require holistic approach and continuous care. However, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has made challenges for the T1D children and their caregivers, professionals, and the healthcare system. This minireview aims to consolidate and discuss the difficulties and solutions of children w...

The first coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case was detected in Singapore on 23 January 2020. Over the two years, Singapore witnessed tightening and easing of policies in response to and in anticipation of new variants, stress on the healthcare sector, and new waves of infection. Upon confirming the reliability of the data using Benford’s analys...

Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is one of the major chronic complications of diabetes mellitus (DM), as well as a main cause of end-stage renal disease. Over the last few years, substantial research studies have revealed a contributory role of gut microbiota in the process of DM and DKD. Metabolites of gut microbiota like lipopolysaccharide, short-ch...

Cellular senescence is a complex and multistep biological process which cells can undergo in response to different stresses. Referring to a highly stable cell cycle arrest, cellular senescence can influence a multitude of biological processes-both physiologically and pathologically. While phenotypically diverse, characteristics of senescence includ...

Diabetes, a metabolic disease characterized by high blood glucose and other complications, has undefined causes and multiple risk factors, including inappropriate diet, unhealthy lifestyles, and genetic predisposition. The two most distinguished types of diabetes are type 1 and type 2 diabetes, resulting from the autoimmune impairment of insulin-ge...

Worldwide, cancer has become one of the leading causes of mortality. Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptors (PPARs) is a family of critical sensors of lipids as well as regulators of diverse metabolic pathways. They are also equipped with the capability to promote eNOS activation, regulate immunity and inflammation response. Aside from the est...

Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. Nanoparticles have been broadly studied and emerged as a novel approach in diagnosis and treatment of tumors. Over the last decade, researches have significantly improved magnetic nanoparticle (MNP)'s theranostic potential as a nanomedicine for cancer. Newer MNPs have various advantages su...

Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. PPAR modulators may hold great potential for the management of cancer patients. Indeed, PPARs are critical sensors and regulators of lipid, and they are able to promote eNOS activation, regulate immunity and inflammation response, and affect proliferation and differentiation of cancer cell...

Cancer has been regarded as one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. Diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers with high sensitivity and specificity for cancer play a crucial role in preventing or treating cancer. Circular RNAs (circRNAs), which hold great potential for the management of cancer patients due to their abundance, stable property,...

Purpose: To investigate the psychological impact of cases of coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) on medical staff of Beijing Xiaotangshan Hospital. Methods: The 287 online questionnaires were distributed to medical staff working at Beijing Xiaotangshan Hospital, comprising three main sections and 17 questions: basic information, current department...

Background: The microdeletion of chromosome 13 has been rarely reported. Here, we report a 14-year old Asian female with a de novo microdeletion on 13q12.3. Case presentation: The child suffered mainly from two types of epileptic seizures: partial onset seizures and myoclonic seizures, accompanied with intellectual disability, developmental delay...

Cancer, as a global health issue, its treatment with conventional approaches is challenged by non-specific biodistribution and targeting, poor solubility, low therapeutic indices and majorly the development of multi-drug resistance (MDR) that enables the cancer cells to survive against antineoplastic agents. A better understanding in tumor biology...

Sarcopenic obesity and diabetes are two increasing health problems worldwide, which both share many common risk factors, such as aging and general obesity. The pathogenesis of sarcopenic obesity includes aging, physical inactivity, malnutrition, low-grade inflammation, insulin resistance, and hormonal changes. Nevertheless, there are two major form...

The recent outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) globally threatens the public health. COVID-19 is a pneumonia caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), previously known as the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Typical symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough and fatigue. As a novel disease, there are still man...

Objective This clinical study was performed to examine the influence of heat-producing acupuncture (HPA) treatment on the local skin temperature of Zúsānlĭ (足三里ST36) acupoint in healthy participants. Methods 30 healthy participants received four successive sessions of heat-producing acupuncture (HPA), non-acupoint HPA (NAHPA), normal stable acupun...

The incidence of diabetes and cancer has increased significantly in recent years. Furthermore, there are many common risk factors for both diabetes and cancer, such as obesity, sedentary lifestyle, smoking, and ageing. A large body of epidemiological evidence has indicated that diabetes is considered as an independent risk factor for increased rate...

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a degenerative disease, making a unique contribution to chronic pain, edema, and limited mobility of knee joint. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a common complementary therapy for KOA and has been found effective. The aim of this review is to consolidate the current knowledge about the mechanism of four interventi...

Components details of all simulation systems, presentations of the lipids, backbone distance between DAP12 TMs in two raft-forming membranes, RDF analysis of lipid components around DAP12 CYTO and PIP2, 2D density maps of DAP12 homodimers in two raft-forming membranes, crossing angle analysis of DAP12 TM dimers in two raft-forming membranes, perpen...

Background Studies suggested that PM 2.5 exposure could lead to adverse reproductive effects on male animals. However, the underlying mechanism is still not clear. Besides, animals in the majority of previous studies were exposed to PM 2.5 through intratracheal instillation which should be improved. In addition, limited amount of research has been...

Diabetes, a silent killer, is one of the most widely prevalent conditions of the present time. According to the 2017 International Diabetes Federation (IDF) statistics, the global prevalence of diabetes among the age group of 20-79 years is 8.8%. In addition, 1 in every 2 persons is unaware of the condition. This unawareness and ignorance lead to f...

Sarcomas are deadly malignant tumors of mesenchymal origin occurring at all ages. The expression and function of the membrane-type matrix metalloproteinase MMP14 is closely related to the mesenchymal cell phenotype, and it is highly expressed in most sarcomas. MMP14 regulates the activity of multiple extracellular and plasma membrane proteins, infl...

Field cancerization and metastasis are the leading causes for cancer recurrence and mortality in cancer patients. The formation of primary, secondary tumors or metastasis is greatly influenced by multifaceted tumor-stroma interactions, in which stromal components of the tumor microenvironment (TME) can affect the behavior of the cancer cells. Many...

The heat-producing needling technique is a special compound manipulating procedure on the acupuncture needle which has been recorded to produce a warm sensation in the body in ancient TCM literature. This randomized, subject-blinded clinical study was performed to examine the effect of heat-producing acupuncture treatment on the ST36 local skin tem...

Skeletal muscle comprises 30–40% of the total body mass and plays a central role in energy homeostasis in the body. The deregulation of energy homeostasis is a common underlying characteristic of metabolic syndrome. Over the past decades, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) have been shown to play critical regulatory roles in skelet...

F1000Prime Recommended... There is much cellular heterogeneity in the tumor microenvironment. The tumor epithelia and stromal cells co-evolve, and this reciprocal relationship dictates almost every step of cancer development and progression. Despite this, many anticancer therapies are designed around druggable features of tumor epithelia, ignoring...

Cysteine-rich peptides (CRPs) have been recognized to display a wide range of biological activities. They are stable against thermal, chemical and enzymatic degradation, due to the multiple strong disulfide bonds between cysteine residues present in the peptide. They are also generally between 2-6 kDa in mass and are often found in plants in associ...