Review of lipoic acid: From a clinical therapeutic agent to various emerging biomaterials.

Lipoic acid (LA), an endogenous small molecule in organisms, has been extensively used for the highly efficient clinical treatment of malignant diseases, which include diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer over the past seven decades. Tremendous progresses have been made on the use of LA in nanomedicine for the development of various biomaterials because of its unique biological properties and highly adaptable structure since the first discovery. However, there are few reviews thus far, to our knowledge, summarizing this hot subject of research of LA and its derived biomaterials.

Prolonged blood circulation outperforms active targeting for nanocarriers-mediated enhanced hepatocellular carcinoma therapy in vivo.

Successful hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) therapy in vivo remains a significant challenge due to the down-regulated expression of the receptors on the surface of tumor cells for compromised active targeting efficiency and cellular uptake of nanoparticles (NPs)-based drug delivery systems (DDSs) and "accelerated blood clearance" and premature unpackaging of NPs in vivo induced by the poly(ethylene glycol)ylation (PEGylation). Inspired by the repeatedly highlighted prolonged blood circulation property of RBCm-camouflaged NPs, we hypothesis that the prolonged blood circulation property resulting from RBCm coating outperforms the active targeting mechanisms of various targeting ligands for enhanced HCC therapy in vivo. Clarification of this hypothesis is therefore of great significance and urgency to break the afore mentioned bottlenecks that hamper the efficient HCC treatment in vivo.