The traditional Chinese medicine safflower is mainly used to promote blood circulation and eliminate meridians obstruction and its effective ingredients,pharmacological activity and application development have attracted much attention,with broad application prospects.Safflower contains quinone chalcones,flavonoids,alkaloids,polyacetylenes,lignans,fatty acids and other chemical components.Modern pharmacological studies have shown that the various pharmacological effects of safflower have been applied in the vascular system,nervous system,immune system diseases and antioxidant,anti-inflammatory,anti-tumor and other aspects.At the same time,safflower seed oil has the function of anti-aging and preventing dietary obesity.This article mainly reviews the research progress on the chemical composition,pharmacological effects,and food health effects of safflower,and summarize the development and application prospects of safflower,in order to provide reference for further research and development of safflower.

Immunotherapy has become a highly promising paradigm for cancer treatment. Herein, a chemo-immunotherapy was developed by encapsulating chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin (DOX) and Toll-like receptor 7 agonist imiquimod (IMQ) in low molecular weight heparin (LMWH)-d--tocopheryl succinate (TOS) micelles (LT). In this process, LMWH and TOS were conjugated by ester bond and they were not only served as the hydrophilic and hydrophobic segments of the carrier, but also exhibited strong anti-metastasis effect. The direct killing of tumor cells mediated by DOX-loaded micelles (LT-DOX) generated tumor-associated antigens, initiating tumor-specific immune responses in combination with IMQ-loaded micelles (LT-IMQ). Furthermore, the blockade of immune checkpoint with programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibody further elevated the immune responses by up-regulating the maturation of DCs as well as the ratios of CD8 CTLs/T and CD4 T/T. Therefore, such a multifunctional strategy exhibited great potential for inhibiting the growth of orthotopic and metastatic breast cancer.