Latest ArticlesAs a new treatment technique, photothermal therapy (PTT) has aroused worldwide attention in cancer treatment, mainly due to its excellent absorption ability, easy regulation, and biodegradability. Photothermal conversion materials with enhanced permeability and retention effect can be targeted easily to tumor tissue. They can accumulate efficiently to tumor tissues and allow normal tissues and organs not to be affected by temperature, thus significantly helping to reduce the systemic toxicity and improve the antitumor effect. However, PTT alone often suffers from therapeutic resistance and reduced therapeutic efficacy, due to photothermal nanomaterial-mediated fundamental cellular defense mechanism of heat shock response, which could be inhibited by small interfering RNA (siRNA). Nevertheless, photothermal conversion materials as an excellent siRNA delivery carrier may considerably enhance the delivery efficiency of siRNA. Therefore, photothermal and RNA interfering (RNAi) synergistic therapy has recently aroused extensive attention in tumor treatment. In this review, we mainly summarize the recent advances of photothermal and RNAi synergistic therapy, including some synergistic therapeutic nanoplatforms of inorganic and organic photothermal materials and other combined therapies such as combining with small molecular antitumor agents or PDT/imaging. The combination of various treatment techniques may considerably improve the synergistic therapeutic effect of PTT and RNAi in the treatment of cancers.
As natural blood components, erythrocytes were good candidates for being used as drug delivery systems to improve the pharmacokinetics, biocompatibility and many other aspects of different drugs. The advantages brought by erythrocytes making erythrocyte-derived drug delivery systems, also known as erythrocyte carriers, suitable for various anti-cancer agents, especially newly invented agents like nanoparticles, which were characterized by their undesired systematic toxicity, anaphylactic reactions and poor biocompatibility. Current researches on erythrocyte carriers in cancer therapy showed inspiring results in four major aspects: cancer enzyme therapy, delivering chemotherapeutic agents, combining with nanoparticles, and several other anti-cancer agents for gene or immune therapy. This novel delivering system was now undergoing the translation process from laboratory to clinical practice. Erythrocyte carriers for cancer enzyme therapy have entered the stage of clinical trial and have showed promising outcomes, and others were still at pre-clinical stage. In summary, erythrocyte-derived drug delivery system might play an indispensable role in the management of cancer in the future.
Nanoparticle surface property is crucial for circulation stability, cellullar uptake and other biological characteristics. Zwitterionic pillar[n]arenes (ZPns) were used to coat gold nanoparticles (GNPs) via host-guest interaction. The resulting GNPs demonstrated higher stability in blood serum compared to polyethylene glycol (PEG)-coated GNPs. ZPn-coated GNPs were responsive to UV-irradiation, competitive displacement and acidic pH. UV-irradiation or competitive displacement could lead to the removal of ZPn coating to expose GNPs, which enhanced cell uptake efficiency by 5.9- and 7.4-fold, respectively.
Conia-ene reactions, as a type of ene reactions, have not become a remarkable focus until the beginning of 21st century, when Lewis acids served as powerful catalysts and found an increasingly broad utilization in this field. Consequently, the catalytic Conia-ene reactions have gained great significance in synthetic chemistry due to their high efficiency and atom economy on the construction of valuable cyclic molecules. During the past two decades, the rapid development of transition-metal catalysis and organocatalysis has imposed a profound impact on the exploration of asymmetric Conia-ene reactions. As a result, several strategies have been developed and applied successfully. Organized on the basis of the catalytic system, this review comprehensively presents a summary of recent progress achieved in this emerging domain, aimed at highlighting the reactions' features, practicalities, and the mechanistic rationale is presented where possible.
There is an increasing demand of using the low-cost and sustainable cobalt to replace its noble congeners (rhodium and iridium) as reflected by the recent upsurge of cobalt catalysis in the diverse organic transformations. Since all the redox reactivity of cobalt catalysis highly relies on the capability of the interconversion between their oxidation states (most frequently +1, +2 and +3), electrochemistry perfectly meets such a requirement owing to its outstanding performance in the redox manipulation. In this review, we highlight the recent advances in the merger of cobalt catalysis and electrochemistry in organic synthesis.
In many reactions involving selenosulfonate or thiosulfonate, the sulfone group often leaves in form of benzenesulfinic acid or sodium benzenesulfinate. A one-pot two-step reaction of selenosulfonate with isocyanides and allyl alcohol under aqueous conditions to afford selenocarbamates and allyl sulfone compounds is reported. The sulfinic acid as the first-step side product is converted to the allyl sulfone compound by water promoted reaction with allyl alcohol. Water acts as both an oxygen source of selenocarbamates and as a promoter to drive the second step reaction. The reactions have the advantages of mild conditions, green, environment-friendly, and high atomic economy.
Metal-free heteroatoms dual-doped carbon has been recognized as one of the most promising Pt/C-substitutes for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). Herein, we optimize the preparation process by doping order of metal-free heteroatoms to obtain the best electrocatalytic performance through three types of dual-doped carbon, including XC-N (first X doping then N doping), NC-X (first N doping then X doping) and NXC (N and X doping) (X = P, S and F). XC-N has more defect than the other two indicated by Raman spectra. X-ray photoelectron spectrom (XPS) measurements indicate that N and X have been dual-doped into the carbon matrix with different doping contents and modes. Electrocatalytic results, including the potential of ORR peak (Ep), the half-wave potential, the diffusion-limiting current density mainly follows the order of XC-N > NC-X > NXC. Furthermore, the synergistic effect of second atom doping are also compared with the single doped carbon (NC, PC, SC and FC). The differences in electronegativity and atomic radius of these metal-free heteroatoms can affect the defect degree, the doping content and mode of heteroatoms on carbon matrix, induce polarization effect and space effect to affect O2 adsorption and product desorption, ultimately to the ORR electrocatalytic performance.
CeO2 morphology was proposed to be a crucial factor for reducing nitrobenzene to azoxybenzene under the base-free condition. Herein, the structure-activity relationship of CeO2 catalysts was explored to improve the azoxybenzene yield. A series of CeO2 catalysts were synthesized with seven morphologies to obtain different Ce3+ proportion and various surface areas. Notably, the catalytic performance of these samples for reducing nitrobenzene to azoxybenzene enhanced with the increasing Ce3+ proportion. With the highest surface Ce3+ proportion, the Rod-CeO2 catalyst exhibited 100% conversion of nitrobenzene and 89.8% azoxybenzene selectivity in 7 h at 150 ℃ under 1 MPa CO. Moreover, the preliminary mechanistic analysis indicated that the inhabitation of azoxybenzene to by-product azobenzene resulted in the high selectivity of azoxybenzene.
Three new emitters, namely 10, 10'-(quinoline-2, 8-diyl)bis(10H-phenoxazine) (Fene), 10, 10'-(quinoline-2, 8-diyl)bis(10H-phenothiazine) (Fens) and 10, 10'-(quinoline-2, 8-diyl)bis(9, 9-dimethyl-9, 10-dihydroacridine) (Yad), featuring quinoline as a new electron acceptor have been designed and conveniently synthesized. These emitters possessed small singlet–triplet splitting energy (ΔEst) and twisted structures, which not only endowed them show thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) properties but also afforded a remarkable aggregation-induced emission (AIE) feature. Moreover, they also showed aggregation-induced delayed fluorescence (AIDF) property and good photoluminescence (PL) property, which are the ideal emitters for non-doped organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Furthermore, high-performance non-doped OLEDs based on Fene, Fens and Yad were achieved, and excellent maximum external quantum efficiencies (EQEmax) of 14.9%, 13.1% and 17.4%, respectively, were obtained. It was also found that all devices exhibited relatively low turn-on voltages ranging from 3.0 V to 3.2 V probably due to their twisted conformation and the AIDF properties. These results demonstrated the quinoline-based emitters could have a promising application in non-doped OLEDs.
Herein, we propose a novel photoelectrochemical (PEC) biosensor for dual microRNAs (miRNAs) highly sensitive and simultaneous biosensing based on strand displaced amplification (SDA) reaction. The recognition of HmiR-21 and Hlet-7a by microRNA-21 and let-7a leads to their change in hairpin structures, subsequently initiating the immobilization of abundant CdS quantum dots (CdS QDs) and methylene blue (MB) based on SDA reaction. The immobilized CdS QDs and MB produce both high PEC currents under 430 nm light and 627 nm light illumination, respectively, and the generated PEC currents are closely relied on target miRNAs amounts. Thus, highly sensitive and simultaneous detection of microRNA-21 Herein, we propose a novel photoelectrochemical (PEC) biosensor for dual microRNAs (miRNAs) highly sensitive and simultaneous biosensing based on strand displaced amplification (SDA) reaction. The recognition of HmiR-21 and Hlet-7a by microRNA-21 and let-7a leads to their change in hairpin structures, subsequently initiating the immobilization of abundant CdS quantum dots (CdS QDs) and methylene blue (MB) based on SDA reaction. The immobilized CdS QDs and MB produce both high PEC currents under 430 nm light and 627 nm light illumination, respectively, and the generated PEC currents are closely relied on target miRNAs amounts. Thus, highly sensitive and simultaneous detection of microRNA-21 and let-7a was readily achieved with detection limit at 6.6 fmol/L and 15.4 fmol/L based on 3σ, respectively. Further, this PEC biosensor was applied in simultaneous analysis of miRNA-21 and let-7a in breast cancer patient's serum with acceptable results. We expect this biosensor will find more useful application in diagnosis of miRNA-related diseases.
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