bims-mricoa 2022-01-09 papers

Issue of 2022–01–09
three papers selected by
Merve Yavuz, Bilkent University

Nano Converg. 2022 Jan 08. 9(1): 2

Protein nanoparticles directed cancer imaging and therapy.

Yao Miao, Tao Yang, Shuxu Yang, Mingying Yang, Chuanbin Mao.

Cancer has been a serious threat to human health. Among drug delivery carriers, protein nanoparticles are unique because of their mild and environmentally friendly preparation methods. They also inherit desired characteristics from natural proteins, such as biocompatibility and biodegradability. Therefore, they have solved some problems inherent to inorganic nanocarriers such as poor biocompatibility. Also, the surface groups and cavity of protein nanoparticles allow for easy surface modification and drug loading. Besides, protein nanoparticles can be combined with inorganic nanoparticles or contrast agents to form multifunctional theranostic platforms. This review introduces representative protein nanoparticles applicable in cancer theranostics, including virus-like particles, albumin nanoparticles, silk protein nanoparticles, and ferritin nanoparticles. It also describes the common methods for preparing them. It then critically analyzes the use of a variety of protein nanoparticles in improved cancer imaging and therapy.

Keywords: Cancer imaging; Cancer therapy; Nanomedicine; Protein nanoparticles; Virus-like particles

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40580-021-00293-4

Nanotheranostics. 2022 ;6(2): 143-160

Metal-Organic Frameworks for Bioimaging: Strategies and Challenges.

Yanfei Liu, Ting Jiang, Zhenbao Liu.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), composited with metal ions and organic linkers, have become promising candidates in the biomedical field own to their unique properties, such as high surface area, pore-volume, tunable pore size, and versatile functionalities. In this review, we introduce and summarize the synthesis and characterization methods of MOFs, and their bioimaging applications, including optical bioimaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and multi-mode. Furthermore, their bioimaging strategies, remaining challenges and future directions are discussed and proposed. This review provides valuable references for the designing of molecular bioimaging probes based on MOFs.

Keywords: Computed tomography; Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); Metal-organic frameworks; Optical bioimaging

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7150/ntno.63458

J Mater Chem B. 2022 Jan 07.

The influence of surface charge on the tumor-targeting behavior of Fe3O4 nanoparticles for MRI.

Saisai Yue, Xin Zhang, Yuping Xu, Lichong Zhu, Junwei Cheng, Yuanyuan Qiao, Suyang Dai, Jialin Zhu, Ni Jiang, Hao Wu, Peisen Zhang, Yi Hou.

Nanomedicine-based tumor-targeted therapy has emerged as a promising strategy to overcome the lack of specificity of conventional chemotherapeutic agents. "Passive" targeting caused by the tumor EPR effect and "active" targeting endowed by the tumor-targeting moieties provide promising biomedical utilities and cancer therapy strategies for nanomedicine. However, as the nanoparticles are exposed to biological fluids, a large number of protein molecules will be adsorbed on their surface, known as protein corona, which may alter the targeting ability of the nanoparticles. The impact of different protein corona on the "passive" and "active" targeting behaviors is still ambiguous. Herein, three kinds of aqueous soluble Fe3O4 nanoparticles with different surface modifications were synthesized and applied to explore the correlation between their protein corona and passive/active tumor-targeting abilities. In the in vitro and in vivo studies, the protein corona exhibited completely different effects on the active and passive cancer-targeting capability of the particles. The particles presented active cancer-targeting ability if there was enough interaction time between the particles and cells. This was mainly due to the dynamic evolution of the protein corona, the proteins of which may be outcompeted by the cancer cell membrane and determine the targeting abilities. Unfortunately, the protein corona also inevitably accelerated RES/MPS uptake after the particles were injected into the body, which almost completely disabled the active targeting abilities of the particles. We believe that this in-depth understanding of protein corona will provide new ideas on the tumor-targeting mechanisms of nanoparticles and present a feasible approach to designing targeted drugs in the future.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/d1tb02349g