Synergistic phototherapy has the potential to conquer the extreme heterogeneity and complexity of difficult tumors and result in better cancer treatment outcomes than monomodal photodynamic therapy ...(PDT) or photothermal therapy (PTT). However, the previous approaches to combining PDT and PTT are mainly focused on primary tumor obliteration while neglecting tumor metastasis, which is responsible for about 90% of cancer deaths. It is shown that a combined PDT/PTT approach, based on upconversion‐polymer hybrid nanoparticles with surface‐loaded chlorin e6 photosensitizer, can enhance primary tumor elimination and elicit antitumor immunity against disseminated tumors. The specifical arrangement of an external upconversion coating over the polymer core ensures adequate photoabsorption by the upconversion nanoparticles for the generation of reactive oxygen species upon single near‐infrared light irradiation. Furthermore, it is found that synergistic phototherapy can elicit robust systemic and humoral antitumor immune responses. When combined with immune checkpoint blockades, it can inhibit tumor relapse and metastasis as well as prolong the survival of tumor‐bearing mice in two types of tumor metastasis models. This study may establish a new modality for enhancing immunogenic cell death through a synergistic phototherapeutic nanoplatform and extend this strategy to overcome tumor metastasis with an augmented antitumor immune response.
Synergistic phototherapy holds potential for improved cancer treatment. Bionanoprobes are designed for synchronous phototherapy of a tumor with high efficiency and augmentation of a robust systemic antitumor immune response.
The ever‐growing global threats to human life caused by the human acute respiratory virus (RV) infections have cost billions of lives, created a significant economic burden, and shaped society for ...centuries. The timely response to emerging RVs could save human lives and reduce the medical care burden. The development of RV detection technologies is essential for potentially preventing RV pandemic and epidemics. However, commonly used detection technologies lack sensitivity, specificity, and speed, thus often failing to provide the rapid turnaround times. To address this problem, new technologies are devised to address the performance inadequacies of the traditional methods. These emerging technologies offer improvements in convenience, speed, flexibility, and portability of point‐of‐care test (POCT). Herein, recent developments in POCT are comprehensively reviewed for eight typical acute respiratory viruses. This review discusses the challenges and opportunities of various recognition and detection strategies and discusses these according to their detection principles, including nucleic acid amplification, optical POCT, electrochemistry, lateral flow assays, microfluidics, enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assays, and microarrays. The importance of limits of detection, throughput, portability, and specificity when testing clinical samples in resource‐limited settings is emphasized. Finally, the evaluation of commercial POCT kits for both essential RV diagnosis and clinical‐oriented practices is included.
The advanced rapid point‐of‐care tests (POCTs), including nucleic acid amplification, optical POCTs, electrochemistry, lateral flow assay, microfluidics, ELISA, and microarray‐based platforms, act figuratively as the Great Wall to the widespread transmission of acute respiratory virus infections by enabling early and rapid detection of these pathogens, as is the case during the current pandemic.
Cancer is one of the most intractable diseases owing to its high mortality rate and lack of effective diagnostic and treatment tools. Advancements in micro‐/nanorobot (MNR)‐assisted sensing, imaging, ...and therapeutics offer unprecedented opportunities to develop MNR‐based cancer theragnostic platforms. Unlike ordinary nanoparticles, which exhibit Brownian motion in biofluids, MNRs overcome viscous resistance in an ultralow Reynolds number (Re << 1) environment by effective self‐propulsion. This unique locomotion property has motivated the advanced design and functionalization of MNRs as a basis for next‐generation cancer‐therapy platforms, which offer the potential for precise distribution and improved permeation of therapeutic agents. Enhanced barrier penetration, imaging‐guided operation, and biosensing are additionally studied to enable the promising cancer‐related applications of MNRs. Herein, the recent advances in MNR‐based cancer therapy are comprehensively addresses, including actuation engines, diagnostics, medical imaging, and targeted drug delivery; promising research opportunities that can have a profound impact on cancer therapy over the next decade is highlighted.
A comprehensive overview on the recent advances of micro‐/nanorobots‐based cancer theragnostic is presented, ranging from actuation engines, diagnostics, medical imaging, and targeted drug delivery, as well as highlighting the most promising research opportunities for the next decade that can have a profound impact on cancer therapy.
Untethered small actuators have various applications in multiple fields. However, existing small-scale actuators are very limited in their intractability with their surroundings, respond to only a ...single type of stimulus and are unable to achieve programmable structural changes under different stimuli. Here, we present a multiresponsive patternable actuator that can respond to humidity, temperature and light, via programmable structural changes. This capability is uniquely achieved by a fast and facile method that was used to fabricate a smart actuator with precise patterning on a graphene oxide film by hydrogel microstamping. The programmable actuator can mimic the claw of a hawk to grab a block, crawl like an inchworm, and twine around and grab the rachis of a flower based on their geometry. Similar to the large- and small-scale robots that are used to study locomotion mechanics, these small-scale actuators can be employed to study movement and biological and living organisms.
Microfluidic chip electrophoresis has been widely employed for separation of various biochemical species owing to its advantages of low sample consumption, low cost, fast analysis, high throughput, ...and integration capability. In this article, we reviewed the development of four different modes of microfluidics‐based electrophoresis technologies including capillary electrophoresis, gel electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis, and field (electric) flow fractionation. Coupling detection schemes on microfluidic electrophoresis platform were also reviewed such as optical, electrochemical, and mass spectrometry method. We further discussed the innovative applications of microfluidic electrophoresis for biomacromolecules (nucleic acids and proteins), biochemical small molecules (amino acids, metabolites, ions, etc.), and bioparticles (cells and pathogens) analysis. The future direction of microfluidic chip electrophoresis was predicted.
Renal tubules are the major component of the kidney and are vulnerable to a variety of injuries including hypoxia, proteinuria, toxins, metabolic disorders, and senescence. It has long been believed ...that tubules are the victim of injury. In this review, we shift this concept to renal tubules as a driving force in the progression of kidney diseases. In response to injury, tubular epithelial cells undergo changes and function as inflammatory and fibrogenic cells, with the consequent production of various bioactive molecules that drive interstitial inflammation and fibrosis. Innate immune-sensing receptors on the tubular epithelium also aggravate immune responses. Necroinflammation, an autoamplification loop between tubular cell death and interstitial inflammation, leads to the exacerbation of renal injury. Furthermore, tubular cells also play an active role in progressive renal injury via emerging mechanisms associated with a partial epithelial-mesenchymal transition, cell-cycle arrest at both G1/S and G2/M check points, and metabolic disorder. Thus, a better understanding the mechanisms by which tubular injury drives inflammation and fibrosis is necessary for the development of therapeutics to halt the progression of chronic kidney disease.
This randomized, phase 3 trial compared the effectiveness of roxadustat, an oral hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor, with epoetin alfa in patients undergoing hemodialysis or ...peritoneal dialysis in China. Oral roxadustat was noninferior to parenteral epoetin alfa as therapy for anemia.
This phase 3, randomized trial in China compared the efficacy and safety of roxadustat, an oral hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor, with placebo for anemia in patients with CKD who ...were not undergoing dialysis. Roxadustat was superior to placebo in increasing and maintaining hemoglobin levels.
PDF
