Highly-Efficient Gallium-Interference Tumor Therapy Mediated by Gallium-Enriched Prussian Blue Nanomedicine.

Prussian blue (PB)-based nanomedicines constructed from metal ion coordination remain restricted due to their limited therapeutic properties, and their manifold evaluation complexity still needs to be unraveled. Owing to the high similarities of its ionic form to iron (Fe) and the resulting cellular homeostasis disruption performance, physiologically unstable and low-toxicity gallium (Ga) has garnered considerable attention clinically as an anti-carcinogen. Herein, Ga-based nanoparticles (NPs) with diverse Ga contents are fabricated in one step using PB with abundant Fe sites as a substrate for Ga substitution, which aims to overcome the deficiencies of both and develop an effective nanomedicine.

Oxygen Vacancy Defect Enhanced NIR-II Photothermal Performance of BiOCl Nanosheets for Combined Phototherapy of Cancer Guided by Multimodal Imaging.

Narrow photo-absorption range and low carrier utilization are significant barriers that restrict the antitumor efficiency of 2D bismuth oxyhalide (BiOX, X = Cl, Br, I) nanosheets (NSs). Introducing oxygen vacancy (OV) defects can expand the absorption range and improve carrier utilization, which are crucial but also challenging. In this study, a series of BiOCl NSs with different OV defect concentrations (x = 1, 0.

Strategies for utilizing covalent organic frameworks as host materials for the integration and delivery of bioactives.

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs), a new and developing class of porous framework materials, are considered a type of promising carrier for the integration and delivery of bioactives, which have diverse fascinating merits, such as a large specific surface area, designable and specific porosity, stable and orderly framework structure, and various active sites. However, owing to the significant differences among bioactives (including drugs, proteins, nucleic acid, and exosomes), such as size, structure, and physicochemical properties, the interaction between COFs and bioactives also varies. In this review, we firstly summarize three strategies for the construction of single or hybrid COF-based matrices for the delivery of cargos, including encapsulation, covalent binding, and coordination bonding.

Toward three-dimensional DNA industrial nanorobots.

Nanoscale industrial robots have potential as manufacturing platforms and are capable of automatically performing repetitive tasks to handle and produce nanomaterials with consistent precision and accuracy. We demonstrate a DNA industrial nanorobot that fabricates a three-dimensional (3D), optically active chiral structure from optically inactive parts. By making use of externally controlled temperature and ultraviolet (UV) light, our programmable robot, ~100 nanometers in size, grabs different parts, positions and aligns them so that they can be welded, releases the construct, and returns to its original configuration ready for its next operation.

DNA Nanomaterial-Empowered Surface Engineering of Extracellular Vesicles.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are cell-secreted biological nanoparticles that are critical mediators of intercellular communication. They contain diverse bioactive components, which are promising diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic agents. Their nanosized membrane-bound structures and innate ability to transport functional cargo across major biological barriers make them promising candidates as drug delivery vehicles.

A highly sensitive method for the detection of p-Aminophenol based on Cu-Au nanoparticles and KIO.

Background: As a common industrial raw material and chemical intermediate, p-Aminophenol (pAP) is recognized as a serious pollutant that poses harm to both the environment and human health. The traditional detection methods for pAP have the advantages of good selectivity and high sensitivity, but their complex operation and time-consuming defects limit their application in on-site detection. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a simple, low-cost, rapid and high-sensitivity method for the detection of pAP.

Multicolor detection of glutathione by manganese dioxide nanosheets and gold nanotetrapods based on an anti-etching mechanism.

Glutathione (GSH) is a crucial non-protein thiol and an indispensable endogenous antioxidant. The aberrant expression of GSH in plasma and cytosol is closely related to numerous diseases, including cancer. Therefore, establishing a sensitive method for analyzing GSH has important application value for biomedical research and clinical medical detection.

Hollow CuSe-based nanocatalysts for combined photothermal and chemodynamic therapy in the second near-infrared window.

Chemodynamic therapy (CDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) have gained popularity due to their non-invasive characteristics and satisfying therapeutic expectations. A Cu-based nanomaterial serving as a Fenton-like nanocatalyst for CDT together with a photothermal agent for simultaneous PTT seems to be a powerful strategy. In this work, the morphological effect of CuSe nanoparticles on CDT and PTT was systematically investigated.

High-order framework nucleic acid for targeted-delivery of antisense peptide nucleic acids to overcome drug resistance.

A sophisticated high-order framework nucleic acid (FNA) was engineered for the targeted delivery and responsive release of environment tolerant antisense peptide nucleic acids (asPNAs). The dendritic FNA-asPNAs system was constructed simple one-pot modular assembly and demonstrated a good synergistic effect with chemotherapy on drug resistant cancer cells.

A novel dual-function SERS-based identification strategy for preliminary screening and accurate diagnosis of circulating tumor cells.

Non-specific adsorption of bioprobes based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) technology inevitably endows white blood cells (WBC) in the peripheral blood with Raman signals, which greatly interfere the identification accuracy of circulating tumor cells (CTCs). In this study, an innovative strategy was proposed to effectively identify CTCs by using SERS technology assisted by a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Firstly, a magnetic FeO-Au complex SERS bioprobe was developed, which could effectively capture the triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells and endow the tumor cells with distinct SERS signals.

Stimuli-Responsive Codelivery System Self-Assembled from Dynamic Covalent Reaction of Macrocyclic Disulfides for Cancer Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Chemotherapy.

Supramolecular self-assembly has gained increasing attention to construct multicomponent drug delivery systems for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Despite that these self-assembled nanosystems present surprising properties beyond that of each subcomponent, the spontaneous nature of co-self-assembly causes significant difficulties in control of the synthesis process and consequently leads to unsatisfactory influences in downstream applications. Hence, we utlized an dynamic covalent reaction based on thiol-disulfide exchange to slowly produce disulfide macrocycles, which subsequently triggered the co-self-assembly of an anticancer drug (doxorubicin, DOX) and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent of ultrasmall iron oxide nanoparticles (IO NPs).

DNA-Programmed Stem Cell Niches via Orthogonal Extracellular Vesicle-Cell Communications.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are natural carriers for intercellular transfer of bioactive molecules, which are harnessed for wide biomedical applications. However, a facile yet general approach to engineering interspecies EV-cell communications is still lacking. Here, the use of DNA to encode the heterogeneous interfaces of EVs and cells in a manner free of covalent or genetic modifications is reported, which enables orthogonal EV-cell interkingdom interactions in complex environments.

Recent Progress in Diboronic-Acid-Based Glucose Sensors.

Non-enzymatic sensors with the capability of long-term stability and low cost are promising in glucose monitoring applications. Boronic acid (BA) derivatives offer a reversible and covalent binding mechanism for glucose recognition, which enables continuous glucose monitoring and responsive insulin release. To improve selectivity to glucose, a diboronic acid (DBA) structure design has been explored and has become a hot research topic for real-time glucose sensing in recent decades.

MCR-ALS-based muscle synergy extraction method combined with LSTM neural network for motion intention detection.

Introduction: The time-varying and individual variability of surface electromyographic signals (sEMG) can lead to poorer motor intention detection results from different subjects and longer temporal intervals between training and testing datasets. The consistency of using muscle synergy between the same tasks may be beneficial to improve the detection accuracy over long time ranges. However, the conventional muscle synergy extraction methods, such as non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) and principal component analysis (PCA) have some limitations in the field of motor intention detection, especially in the continuous estimation of upper limb joint angles.

Using different matrix factorization approaches to identify muscle synergy in stroke survivors.

Over the past several decades, many scholars have investigated muscle synergy as a promising tool for evaluating motor function. However, it is challenging to obtain favorable robustness using the general muscle synergy identification algorithms, namely non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), independent component analysis (ICA), and factor analysis (FA). Some scholars have proposed improved muscle synergy identification algorithms to overcome the shortcomings of these approaches, such as singular value decomposition NMF (SVD-NMF), sparse NMF (S-NMF), and multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares (MCR-ALS).

Self-Assembly of Organelle-Localized Neuropeptides Triggers Intrinsic Apoptosis Against Breast Cancer.

Biosynthesis has become a diverse toolbox for the development of bioactive molecules and materials, particularly for enzyme-induced modification and assembly of peptides. However, intracellular spatiotemporal regulation of artificial biomolecular aggregates based on neuropeptide remains challenging. Here, an enzyme responsive precursor (Y L-KGRR-FF-IR) is developed based on the neuropeptide Y Y receptor ligand, which self-assembles into nanoscale assemblies in the lysosomes and subsequently has an appreciable destructive effect on the mitochondria and cytoskeleton, resulting in breast cancer cell apoptosis.

Recent progress on near-infrared fluorescence heptamethine cyanine dye-based molecules and nanoparticles for tumor imaging and treatment.

Recenly, near-infrared fluorescence heptamethine cyanine dyes have shown satisfactory values in bioengineering, biology, and pharmacy especially in cancer diagnosis and treatment, owing to their excellent fluorescence property and biocompatibility. In order to achieve broad application prospects, diverse structures, and chemical properties of heptamethine cyanine dyes have been designed to develop novel functional molecules and nanoparticles over the past decade. For fluorescence and photoacoustic tumor imaging properties, heptamethine cyanine dyes are equipped with good photothermal performance and reactive oxygen species production properties under near-infrared light irradiation, thus holding great promise in photodynamic and/or photothermal cancer therapies.

Fuzzy Adaptive Passive Control Strategy Design for Upper-Limb End-Effector Rehabilitation Robot.

Robot-assisted rehabilitation therapy has been proven to effectively improve upper-limb motor function in stroke patients. However, most current rehabilitation robotic controllers will provide too much assistance force and focus only on the patient's position tracking performance while ignoring the patient's interactive force situation, resulting in the inability to accurately assess the patient's true motor intention and difficulty stimulating the patient's initiative, thus negatively affecting the patient's rehabilitation outcome. Therefore, this paper proposes a fuzzy adaptive passive (FAP) control strategy based on subjects' task performance and impulse.

Navigating zinc-involved nanomedicine in oncotherapy.

Zinc (Zn), extolled as "the flower of life" in modern medicine, has been extensively highlighted with its physiological functions to maintain growth, development, and metabolism homeostasis. Driven by the substantial advancement of nanotechnology and oncology, Zn-involved nanomedicines integrating the intrinsic bioactivity of Zn species and the physiochemical attributes of Zn-composed nanosystems have blazed a highly efficient and relatively biosafe antineoplastic path. In this review, we aim to highlight and discuss the recent representative modalities of emerging Zn-involved oncology nanomedicine, mainly emphasizing the rational design, biological effect and biosafety, and therapeutic strategies.

Choroidal layer segmentation in OCT images by a boundary enhancement network.

Morphological changes of the choroid have been proved to be associated with the occurrence and pathological mechanism of many ophthalmic diseases. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive technique for imaging of ocular biological tissues, that can reveal the structure of the retinal and choroidal layers in micron-scale resolution. However, unlike the retinal layer, the interface between the choroidal layer and the sclera is ambiguous in OCT, which makes it difficult for ophthalmologists to identify with certainty.