Advanced Nanobiomed Research最新文献

Intracellular assemblies play vital roles in maintaining cellular functions through structural recognition-mediated interactions. The introduction of artificial structures has garnered substantial interest in modulating cellular functions via activation/inhibition interactions with biomacromolecules. However, the cellular uptake of these high-molecular-weight structures may limit their performance. Recently, intracellular chemical-reaction-induced self-assembly has emerged as a promising strategy for generating in situ nanostructures with biofunctionalities for interacting with biomacromolecules. This approach addresses the challenge of synthetic reactions occurring in complex intracellular environments by utilizing diverse chemical reactions that respond to endogenous and exogenous stimuli. This review provides an overview of the latest advancements in intracellular chemical-reaction-induced self-assembly techniques. It focuses on their responsiveness to specific endogenous conditions, such as redox environments and overexpressed enzymes. Additionally, the initiation of chemical reactions through exogenous stimuli, including chemical reagents and irradiation is explored. Polymerization-induced hydrophobicity is highlighted, leading to self-assembly into micro-/nanostructures. These processes contribute to the in situ construction of synthetic materials with diverse morphologies, offering versatile functionalities for biological applications.

Tissue Adhesives

In article number 2300090, Khoon S. Lim and co-workers present the complications arising from tissue adhesives having insufficient adhesion strength. Different strategies are proposed to engineer on-demand removal properties of tissue-adhesive hydrogels which will guide researchers interested to work in this field.

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a prevalent cancer worldwide, and the development of anti-OSCC materials is urgent. The tumor microenvironment has been identified as a significant characteristic of cancer, with the pHe value in OSCC ranging from 6.56 to 6.97. Given the acidic nature of OSCC, the creation of pH-sensitive antitumor materials has become a prominent area of research. A pH-sensitive tertiary amine monomer, dodecylmethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DMAEM), has been previously synthesized. This study aims to evaluate the impact of DMAEM on OSCC. The results demonstrated that DMAEM inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion of OSCC cells. Furthermore, it promoted apoptosis and autophagy of OSCC cells, with its anti-OSCC effect being strengthened in the acidic environment. In a subcutaneous transplantation tumor model, DMAEM inhibited the growth of OSCC and expression of Ki-67. The analysis of 16S rDNA sequencing data revealed that DMAEM had no significant impact on the Alpha/Beta diversity of the gastrointestinal tract microbiota in mice and had minimal effect on its composition. Overall, this study suggests that DMAEM exhibits pH-responsive behavior in the acidic tumor microenvironment, effectively inhibiting OSCC without disturbing the gastrointestinal microbiota. These findings highlight the potential of DMAEM for clinical applications in OSCC treatment.

Islet transplantation is a curative treatment for patients suffering from type 1 diabetes and has the potential to replace current treatment strategies involving the exogenous administration of insulin. Despite this potential, there are many hurdles in achieving successful long-term graft survival due to autoimmune and foreign body reactions leading to graft rejection coupled with donor shortage and potential adverse effects from the need for long-term administration of immunosuppressive drugs. As a result, various approaches have been proposed to increase the viability and function of islet grafts during isolation and ex vivo culture with the use of growth factors, hormones, and other therapeutic agents. In addition, other strategies have addressed how to enhance or maintain islet graft performance after implantation with improvements on immunosuppressive drug regimens and the use of biomaterials to encapsulate and protect the cells from graft rejection. This review focuses on the recent advances in strategies to improve islet viability and function with the addition of exogenous compounds and the implementation of conformal coating as a promising tool for immunoprotection of islet transplants.

This review is aiming to systematically elucidate the unique role of nanotechnology in optimizing therapeutic modalities for combinatorial cancer immunotherapy, which enables the synergistic integration of multiple treatment strategies. In particular, nanotechnology has enabled the synergistic combination of immunotherapy with physical therapies, chemotherapy, metal therapy, and nucleic acid therapy. In each combination regimen, nanocarriers play multifaceted roles by achieving targeted codelivery of different therapeutics and optimizing each individual treatment modality. This offers new paradigms to guide precision medicine in cancer treatment. Immunotherapy alone is unlikely to achieve personalized precision medicine for cancer, and new treatment modalities are needed in the future. To overcome technical bottlenecks and realize precise regulation of the tumor microenvironment for personalized cancer treatment, it is crucial to develop novel nanosystems with integrated sensing, targeting, and therapeutic functionalities.

Photothermal therapy (PTT) has emerged as a promising approach for tumor ablation utilizing hyperthermia offers several advantages, including non-invasiveness, spatiotemporal controllability, and notable therapeutic efficacy. However, the clinical application of PTT is challenged by the heat diffusion. To address this, mild PTT (mPTT) has gained attention as an alternative strategy, operating at temperatures below 45 °C, with remarkable antitumor effects and minimal thermal damage to nearby normal tissues. Despite these benefits, the expression of heat shock proteins (HSPs) induces thermal resistance, which limits the therapeutic potential and practical implementation of mPTT. Nanomedicines have emerged as a solution to overcome these challenges, offering improved solubility, prolonged circulation time, enhanced tumor accumulation, and controlled cargo release, surpassing the capabilities of small molecular HSP inhibitors. Herein, it has been aimed to discuss the current landscape of photothermal agents, elucidate the underlying mechanisms of mPTT, highlight the benefits of mPTT in combination therapy, and explore the potential of nanomedicines to enhance mPTT efficacy. Additionally, future directions for the development of mPTT are presented and the challenges that are needed to be addressed are identified, with the aim of encouraging further research contributions to advance mPTT toward clinical applications.

Photothermal Therapy

In article number 2300107, Jiashing Yu, Kevin C.-W. Wu, Horacio Cabral, and co-workers use a nanosized metal–organic framework (MOF) to generate palladium nanoparticles within the MOF structure for producing photothermal effects. The palladium nanoparticles, having their surface stabilized with biocompatible block copolymers, achieve increased tumor accumulation and remission of B16F10 melanoma upon irradiation with near-infrared light.

In biomaterials development, creating materials with desirable properties can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process, often relying on serendipitous discoveries. A potential route to accelerate this process is to employ artificial intelligence methodologies such as machine learning (ML). Herein, the possibility to predict anti-inflammatory properties of the polymers by using a simplified model of inflammation and a restrained dataset is explored. Cellular assays with 50 different polymers are conducted using the murine macrophage cell line RAW 264.7 as a model. These experiments generate a dataset which is used to develop a ML model based on Bayesian logistic regression. After conducting a Bayesian logistic regression analysis, two ML models, K-nearest neighbors (KNN) and Naïve Bayes, are employed to predict anti-inflammatory polymers properties. The study finds that the probability of a polymer having anti-inflammatory properties is multiplied by three if it is a polycation, and that nitric oxide secretion is a good indicator in determining the anti-inflammatory properties of a polymer, which in this work are defined by tumor necrosis factor alpha expression decrease. Overall, the study suggests that with appropriate dataset design, ML techniques can provide valuable information on functional polymer properties, enabling faster and more efficient biomaterial development.

Significant challenges persist in enhancing the delivery efficiency of tumor nanomedicines, predominantly due to the difficulty of successfully surpassing pathophysiological barriers. Enhancing tumor penetration of nanomedicines in such conditions represents a pivotal goal in advancing anticancer nanotherapeutics. Transcytosis emerges as a promising solution in this context, addressing the limitations of passive drug delivery. By harnessing diverse stimuli to induce transcytosis, nanocarriers can achieve precise drug delivery and deep tumor penetration, resulting in high therapeutic efficacy and reduced systemic exposure to the therapeutic compound. This review briefly examines various stimuli-responsive nanosystems and offers an overview and outlook on the development of stimuli-responsive nanocarriers for transcytosis-based cancer drug delivery, aiming to provide informative insights for the design of nanomedicines capable of deep tissue penetration and enhanced therapeutic efficacy.