Nonviral targeted mRNA delivery: principles, progresses, and challenges.

Messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics have garnered considerable attention due to their remarkable efficacy in the treatment of various diseases. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and RSV mRNA vaccine have been approved on the market. Due to the inherent nuclease-instability and negative charge of mRNA, delivery systems are developed to protect the mRNA from degradation and facilitate its crossing cell membrane to express functional proteins or peptides in the cytoplasm.

Insights into the formulation of lipid nanoparticles for the optimization of mRNA therapeutics.

mRNA-based therapeutics increasingly demonstrate significant potential in treating various diseases, including infectious diseases, cancers, and genetic disorders. Effective delivery systems are crucial for advancing mRNA therapeutics. Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) serve as an excellent carrier, widely validated for their safety and tolerability in commercially available mRNA vaccines.

Molecular engineering to red-shift the absorption band of AIE photosensitizers and improve their ROS generation ability.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) with aggregation-induced emission photosensitizers (AIE-PSs) has attracted increasing attention for their enhanced fluorescence and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation abilities upon aggregation. However, it is difficult for AIE-PSs to simultaneously achieve long-wavelength excitation (>600 nm) and high singlet oxygen quantum yield, which restricts their application in deep-tissue PDT. In this study, four novel AIE-PSs were developed by appropriate molecular engineering, and their absorption peaks shifted from 478 to 540 nm with a tail extending to 700 nm.

An AIE photosensitizer with unquenched fluorescence based on nitrobenzoic acid for tumor-targeting and image-guided photodynamic therapy.

Fluorescence quenching occurs in most nitroaromatic compounds due to photoinduced electron transfer (PET) effects, limiting their use as image-guided photosensitizers for anticancer photodynamic therapy (PDT) or as probes for nitroreductase in hypoxic cells. Herein, we developed a tumor-targeting aggregation-induced emission photosensitizer (AIE-PS), Biotin-TTVBA, by binding TTVBA (a nitrobenzoic acid-based AIE-PS with a free carboxylic acid group) to biotin. Biotin-TTVBA has near-infrared emission characteristics in DMSO containing 99% toluene, a large Stoke's shift (210 nm), high photostability, wash-free cell staining ability and type I/II photosensitivity.

Restricting Bond Rotations by Ring Fusion: A Novel Molecular Design Strategy to Improve Photodynamic Antibacterial Efficacy of AIE Photosensitizers.

In recent years, aggregation-induced emission photosensitizers (AIE-PSs) for antibacterial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) have received increasing attention because of their ability to increase reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in the aggregation state. However, their antibacterial effect still has great room for improvement. Herein, we propose that if the rotation of some bonds in AIE-PSs is restricted, the nonradiative decay could be further suppressed to boost the generation of fluorescence and ROS, so as to improve their antibacterial efficacy.

Selection and truncation of aptamers for ultrasensitive detection of sulfamethazine using a fluorescent biosensor based on graphene oxide.

We developed a fluorescent aptamer/graphene oxide (GO)-based biosensor to detect sulfamethazine (SMZ) residues in animal-derived foods. The SMZ-bound aptamers were identified and screened with an improved GO-SELEX technique using non-immobilizing ssDNA library. After seven rounds of selection, six SMZ aptamers were sequenced and analyzed for secondary structure, and their affinity and specificity were assessed by binding assays.

A fluorescent immunochromatographic strip test using a quantum dot-antibody probe for rapid and quantitative detection of 1-aminohydantoin in edible animal tissues.

A rapid, simple, and sensitive fluorescent immunochromatographic strip test (ICST) based on quantum dots (QDs) has been developed to detect 1-aminohydantoin (AHD), a major metabolite of nitrofurantoin in animal tissues. To achieve this, QD-labeled antibody conjugates, which consist of CdSe/ZnS QDs and monoclonal antibodies, were prepared by an activated ester method. Under optimal conditions, with the nitrophenyl derivative of AHD as the target, the ICST had a linear range from 0.