In the study of neurodegenerative diseases,a hypothesis of inflammation in central nervous system is raised:the activated microglia leads to sustained release of preinflammatory cytokines and injury of normal neural structures and function,resulting in learning and memory deficits,such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD).Synapses structural disorders are responsible for deficit of synaptic plasticity;after high frequency stimulation,changes of long-term potentiation (LTP) are most obvious in synaptic plasticity,characterized by decrease of amplitude and excitatory postsynaptic potential duration.Activated microglia and inflammatory cytokines released by activated microglia,such as interleukin-1β,tumor necrosis factor-α and nitric oxide are involved in the pathological process of LTP changes in these kinds of disease.The aim of this paper is to give a review about progress in the relations between microglia activation and LTP in neurodegenerative diseases researches in recent years and hope to have something to guide the research of neurodegenerative disease.

As a ligand-dependent transcription factor,retinoid-associated orphan receptor γt(RORyt)that controls T helper(Th)17 cell differentiation and interleukin(IL)-17 expression plays a critical role in the pro-gression of several inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.An emerging novel approach to the therapy of these diseases thus involves controlling the transcriptional capacity of RORyt to decrease Th17 cell development and IL-17 production.Several RORyt inhibitors including both antagonists and inverse agonists have been discovered to regulate the transcriptional activity of RORyt by binding to orthosteric-or allosteric-binding sites in the ligand-binding domain.Some of small-molecule inhibitors have entered clinical evaluations.Therefore,in current review,the role of RORyt in Th17 regulation and Th17-related inflammatory and autoimmune diseases was highlighted.Notably,the recently developed RORyt inhibitors were summarized,with an emphasis on their optimization from lead compounds,ef-ficacy,toxicity,mechanisms of action,and clinical trials.The limitations of current development in this area were also discussed to facilitate future research.

Tumor cells along with a small proportion of cancer stem cells exist in a stromal microenvironment consisting of vasculature, cancer-associated fibroblasts, immune cells and extracellular components. Recent epidemiological and clinical studies strongly support that vitamin D supplementation is associated with reduced cancer risk and favorable prognosis. Experimental results suggest that vitamin D not only suppresses cancer cells, but also regulates tumor microenvironment to facilitate tumor repression. In this review, we have outlined the current knowledge on epidemiological studies and clinical trials of vitamin D. Notably, we summarized and discussed the anticancer action of vitamin D in cancer cells, cancer stem cells and stroma cells in tumor microenvironment, providing a better understanding of the role of vitamin D in cancer. We presently re-propose vitamin D to be a novel and economical anticancer agent.