Phase-Change Based Oxygen Carriers Improve Acute Cerebral Hypoxia.

Stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide, and hypoxia is a major crisis of the brain after stroke. Therefore, providing oxygen to the brain microenvironment can effectively protect neurons from damage caused by cerebral hypoxia. However, there is a lack of timely and effective means of oxygen delivery clinically to the brain for acute cerebral hypoxia.

Antigen-loaded flagellate bacteria for enhanced adaptive immune response by intradermal injection.

Since the skin limits the distribution of intradermal vaccines, a large number of dendritic cells in the skin cannot be fully utilized to elicit a more effective immune response. Here, we loaded the antigen to the surface of the flagellate bacteria that was modified by cationic polymer, thus creating antigen-loaded flagellate bacteria (denoted as 'FB-Ag') to overcome the skin barrier and perform the active delivery of antigen in the skin. The FB-Ag showed fast speed (∼0.

Flagella of Tumor-Targeting Bacteria Trigger Local Hemorrhage to Reprogram Tumor-Associated Macrophages for Improved Antitumor Therapy.

Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) exhibit an immunosuppressive M2 phenotype and lead to failure of antitumor therapy. Infiltrated erythrocytes during hemorrhage are recognized as a promising strategy for polarizing TAMs. However, novel materials that precisely induce tumor hemorrhage without affecting normal coagulation still face challenges.

Recent advances in bacterial therapeutics based on sense and response.

Intelligent drug delivery is a promising strategy for cancer therapies. In recent years, with the rapid development of synthetic biology, some properties of bacteria, such as gene operability, excellent tumor colonization ability, and host-independent structure, make them ideal intelligent drug carriers and have attracted extensive attention. By implanting condition-responsive elements or gene circuits into bacteria, they can synthesize or release drugs by sensing stimuli.

Flagellated bacterial porter for tumor vaccine.

Cancer immunotherapy, which use the own immune system to attack tumors, are increasingly popular treatments. But, due to the tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment, the antigen presentation in the tumor is limited. Recently, a growing number of people use bacteria to stimulate the body's immunity for tumor treatment due to bacteria themselves have a variety of elements that activate Toll-like receptors.

Hijacking Self-Assembly to Establish Intracellular Functional Nanoparticles.

The targeted transport of nanomedicines is often impeded by various biological events in the body. Viruses can hijack host cells and utilize intracellular transcription and translation biological events to achieve their replication. Inspired by this, a strategy to hijack endogenous products of biological events to assemble into intracellular functional nanoparticles is established.

Systemic immune responses to irradiated tumours via the transport of antigens to the tumour periphery by injected flagellate bacteria.

Because the tumour microenvironment is typically immunosuppressive, the release of tumour antigens mediated by radiotherapy or chemotherapy does not sufficiently activate immune responses. Here we show that, following radiotherapy, the intratumoural injection of a genetically attenuated strain of Salmonella coated with antigen-adsorbing cationic polymer nanoparticles caused the accumulation of tumour antigens at the tumour's periphery. This enhanced the crosstalk between the antigens and dendritic cells, and resulted in large increases in activated ovalbumin-specific dendritic cells in vitro and in systemic antitumour effects, and extended survival in multiple tumour models in mice, including a model of metastasis and recurrence.

Perfluorocarbon regulates the intratumoural environment to enhance hypoxia-based agent efficacy.

Hypoxia-based agents (HBAs), such as anaerobic bacteria and bioreductive prodrugs, require both a permeable and hypoxic intratumoural environment to be fully effective. To solve this problem, herein, we report that perfluorocarbon nanoparticles (PNPs) can be used to create a long-lasting, penetrable and hypoxic tumour microenvironment for ensuring both the delivery and activation of subsequently administered HBAs. In addition to the increased permeability and enhanced hypoxia caused by the PNPs, the PNPs can be retained to further achieve the long-term inhibition of intratumoural O reperfusion while enhancing HBA accumulation for over 24 h.

Characterization of a liposome-based artificial skin membrane for in vitro permeation studies using Franz diffusion cell device.

A prerequisite for successful transdermal or dermal drug therapy is the drug ability to penetration through the skin, especially stratum corneum (SC). The most acceptable technique for measuring skin permeation in vitro is the application of both the Franz diffusion cell device and the skin model. In the skin model, a liposome-based artificial skin membrane (LASM) consisting of tight layers of liposomes immobilized on a filter was prepared and characterized.