CRISPR-Cas and CRISPR-based screening system for precise gene editing and targeted cancer therapy.

Target cancer therapy has been developed for clinical cancer treatment based on the discovery of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat) -Cas system. This forefront and cutting-edge scientific technique improves the cancer research into molecular level and is currently widely utilized in genetic investigation and clinical precision cancer therapy. In this review, we summarized the genetic modification by CRISPR/Cas and CRISPR screening system, discussed key components for successful CRISPR screening, including Cas enzymes, guide RNA (gRNA) libraries, target cells or organs.

Laser-Ignited Lipid Peroxidation Nanoamplifiers for Strengthening Tumor Photodynamic Therapy Through Aggravating Ferroptotic Propagation and Sustainable High Immunogenicity.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is extensively investigated for tumor therapy in the clinic. However, the efficacy of PDT is severely limited by the tissue penetrability of light, short effective half-life and radius of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and the weak immunostimulatory effect. In this study, a glutathione (GSH)-activatable nano-photosensitizer is developed to load with arachidonic acid (AA) and camouflage by erythrocyte membrane, which serves as a laser-ignited lipid peroxidation nanoamplifier (MAR).

Imaging-Guided Photoacoustic Immunotherapy Based on the Polydopamine-Functionalized Black Phosphorus Nanocomposites.

Phototherapy has great application prospects in superficial tumors, such as melanoma, esophageal cancer, and breast carcinoma, owing to the advantages of noninvasiveness, high spatiotemporal selectivity, and less side effects. However, classical phototherapies including photodynamic and photothermal therapy still need to settle the bottleneck problems of poor efficacy, inevitable thermal damage, and a high rate of postoperative recurrence. In this study, we developed a nanocomposite with excellent optical properties and immune-stimulating properties, termed PBP@CpG, which was obtained by functionalizing black phosphorus (BP) with polydopamine and further adsorbing CpG.

CuP/1-MT Nanocomposites Potentiated Photothermal-Immunotherapy.

Purpose: Photothermal therapy (PTT) is a promising anticancer treatment that involves inducing thermal ablation and enhancing antitumor immune responses. However, it is difficult to completely eradicate tumor foci through thermal ablation alone. Additionally, the PTT elicited antitumor immune responses are often insufficient to prevent tumor recurrence or metastasis, due to the presence of an immunosuppressive microenvironment.

Nanoplatforms Potentiated Ablation-Immune Synergistic Therapy through Improving Local Control and Suppressing Recurrent Metastasis.

Minimally invasive ablation has been widely applied for treatment of various solid tumors, including hepatocellular carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, breast carcinomas, etc. In addition to removing the primary tumor lesion, ablative techniques are also capable of improving the anti-tumor immune response by inducing immunogenic tumor cell death and modulating the tumor immune microenvironment, which may be of great benefit to inhibit the recurrent metastasis of residual tumor. However, the short-acting activated anti-tumor immunity of post-ablation will rapidly reverse into an immunosuppressive state, and the recurrent metastasis owing to incomplete ablation is closely associated with a dismal prognosis for the patients.

Thermoacoustic Imaging-Guided Thermo-Chemotherapy for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Sensitized by a Microwave-Responsive Nitric Oxide Nanogenerator.

Imaging-guided percutaneous microwave thermotherapy has been regarded as an important alternative nonsurgical therapeutic strategy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that provides excellent local tumor control and favorable survival benefit. However, providing a high-resolution, real-time, and noninvasive imaging technique for intraoperative guidance and controlling postoperative residual tumor recurrence are urgent needs for the clinical setting. In this study, a cisplatin (CDDP)-loaded nanocapsule (NPs@CDDP) with microwave responsive property was prepared to simultaneously serve as a contrast agent of emerging thermoacoustic imaging and a sensitizing agent of microwave thermo-chemotherapy.

Hydrogen sulfide activatable metal-organic frameworks for Fluorescence Imaging-Guided Photodynamic Therapy of colorectal cancer.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a promising alternative and palliative therapeutic strategy for colorectal cancer (CRC). A novel photosensitizer with higher selectivity for CRC and fewer side effects is vital for clinical application. Given that the overexpression of hydrogen sulfide (HS) in CRC, it is expected to provide a selective stimulus for activatable photosensitizers that in respond to the specific microenvironment.

Multifunctional Nanosystems Powered Photodynamic Immunotherapy.

Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) with the intrinsic advantages including non-invasiveness, spatiotemporal selectivity, low side-effects, and immune activation ability has been clinically approved for the treatment of head and neck cancer, esophageal cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Nevertheless, the PDT is only a strategy for local control of primary tumor, that it is hard to remove the residual tumor cells and inhibit the tumor metastasis. Recently, various smart nanomedicine-based strategies are developed to overcome the barriers of traditional PDT including the drawbacks of traditional photosensitizers, limited tissue penetrability of light, inefficient induction of tumor cell death and tumor resistance to the therapy.

Tumor Microenvironment-Responsive Nanodrug for Clear-Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma Therapy via Triggering Waterfall-Like Cascade Ferroptosis.

The most common type of kidney tumor, clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) with relatively insidious development and easily metastatic characteristics is generally insensitive to cytotoxic chemotherapy. The abundant polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) content in advanced ccRCC allows it to be intrinsically vulnerable to ferroptosis-based therapeutic strategies. Nevertheless, the strategy to cause the "iron overload" by administration with iron-based nanomaterials has limited therapeutic efficacy.

Doxorubicin-Loaded Metal-Organic Framework Nanoparticles as Acid-Activatable Hydroxyl Radical Nanogenerators for Enhanced Chemo/Chemodynamic Synergistic Therapy.

Doxorubicin (DOX) is a widely used first-line antitumor agent; however, acquired drug resistance and side effects have become the main challenges to effective cancer therapy. Herein, DOX is loaded into iron-rich metal-organic framework/tannic acid (TA) nanocomplex to form a tumor-targeting and acid-activatable drug delivery system (MOF/TA-DOX, MTD). Under the acidic tumor microenvironment, MTD simultaneously releases DOX and ferrous ion (Fe) accompanied by degradation.

Carbon-Coated Magnetic Nanoparticle Dedicated to MRI/Photoacoustic Imaging of Tumor in Living Mice.

Multimodality imaging can reveal complementary anatomic and functional information as they exploit different contrast mechanisms, which has broad clinical applications and promises to improve the accuracy of tumor diagnosis. Accordingly, to attain the particular goal, it is critical to exploit multimodal contrast agents. In the present work, we develop novel cobalt core/carbon shell-based nanoparticles (Cobalt at carbon NPs) with both magnetization and light absorption properties for dual-modality magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and photoacoustic imaging (PAI).

Spherical-matching hyperbolic-array photoacoustic computed tomography.

Linear-array photoacoustic computed tomography (LA-PACT), for its flexibility and simplicity, has great potential in providing anatomical and functional information of tissues. However, the limited coverage view impedes the LA-PACT obtaining high-quality images. In this study, a photoacoustic tomographic system with a hyperbolic-array transducer was developed for stereoscopic PA imaging of carotid artery.

Dual-Responsive Polyprodrug Nanoparticles with Cascade-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Signals for Deep-Penetration Drug Release in Tumor Therapy.

Smart transformable nanocarriers are promising to treat deep-seated diseases but require adaptable diagnostic/imaging potency to reflect the morphology change and therapeutic feedback, yet their design and synthesis remains challenging. Herein, stimuli-responsive polyprodrug nanoparticles (SPNs) are formulated from the co-assembly of negatively charged corona and positively charged polyprodrug cores, exhibiting high loading content of camptothecin (CPT, ∼28.6 wt %) tethered via disulfide linkages in the core.

Mitochondrial specific photodynamic therapy by rare-earth nanoparticles mediated near-infrared graphene quantum dots.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been proposed in cancer treatment for decades, but its clinical translation is significantly impeded by the low yield of ROS, poor tissue penetration depth of most current photosensitizers, and short lifetime of ROS. These limitations directly affect the therapeutic effect of PDT in cancer therapy. Here we proposed a new strategy by collaboratively integrating rare-earth doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNP) with graphene quantum dot (GQD) for highly efficacious PDT, based on the merits of UCNP, which can emit UV-vis light under near-infrared light (NIR) excitation, and GQD, which can produce O efficiently.

Thermoacoustic Imaging and Therapy Guidance based on Ultra-short Pulsed Microwave Pumped Thermoelastic Effect Induced with Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles.

Multifunctional nanoparticle-mediated imaging and therapeutic techniques are promising modalities for accurate localization and targeted treatment of cancer in clinical settings. Thermoacoustic (TA) imaging is highly sensitive to detect the distribution of water, ions or specific nanoprobes and provides excellent resolution, good contrast and superior tissue penetrability. TA therapy is a potential non-invasive approach for the treatment of deep-seated tumors.

Imaging-guided photoacoustic drug release and synergistic chemo-photoacoustic therapy with paclitaxel-containing nanoparticles.

Here, a novel triggered drug release modality was developed for oncotherapy. Paclitaxel (PTX), perfluorohexane (PFH) and gold nanorods (AuNRs) loaded nanoparticles (PTX-PAnP) were synthesized. Folic acid (FA) conjugated PTX-PAnP (PTX-PAnP-FA) could be selectively taken into folate receptor-overexpressed tumor cells.

Microwave pumped high-efficient thermoacoustic tumor therapy with single wall carbon nanotubes.

The ultra-short pulse microwave could excite to the strong thermoacoustic (TA) shock wave and deeply penetrate in the biological tissues. Based on this, we developed a novel deep-seated tumor therapy modality with mitochondria-targeting single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) as microwave absorbing agents, which act efficiently to convert ultra-short microwave energy into TA shock wave and selectively destroy the targeted mitochondria, thereby inducing apoptosis in cancer cells. After the treatment of SWNTs (40 μg/mL) and ultra-short microwave (40 Hz, 1 min), 77.

Imaging-guided high-efficient photoacoustic tumor therapy with targeting gold nanorods.

Unlabelled: Photoacoustic therapy using the large photoacoustic effect of agents for selectively killing cancer cells is demonstrated. Herein, a highly efficient photoacoustic treatment using gold nanorods (AuNRs) and its antitumor effect are reported. Folic acid conjugated AuNRs are designed to specifically target folate receptor-expressing cancer cells.