Renal fibrosis is the common outcome in all progressive forms of chronic kidney disease. Unfortunately, the pathogenesis of renal fibrosis remains largely unexplored, among which metabolic reprogramming plays an extremely crucial role in the evolution of renal fibrosis. Ceria nanoparticles (CeNP-PEG) with strong ROS scavenging and anti-inflammatory activities have been applied for mitochondrial oxidative stress and inflammatory diseases. The present study aims to determine whether CeNP-PEG has therapeutic value for renal fibrosis.

The management of diabetic ulcer (DU) to rescue stalled wound healing remains a paramount clinical challenge due to the spatially and temporally coupled pathological wound microenvironment that features hyperglycemia, biofilm infection, hypoxia and excessive oxidative stress. Here we present a pH-switchable nanozyme cascade catalysis (PNCC) strategy for spatial-temporal modulation of pathological wound microenvironment to rescue stalled healing in DU. The PNCC is demonstrated by employing the nanozyme of clinically approved iron oxide nanoparticles coated with a shell of glucose oxidase (Fe3O4-GOx). The Fe3O4-GOx possesses intrinsic glucose oxidase (GOx), catalase (CAT) and peroxidase (POD)-like activities, and can catalyze pH-switchable glucose-initiated GOx/POD and GOx/CAT cascade reaction in acidic and neutral environment, respectively. Specifically, the GOx/POD cascade reaction generating consecutive fluxes of toxic hydroxyl radical spatially targets the acidic biofilm (pH ~ 5.5), and eradicates biofilm to shorten the inflammatory phase and initiate normal wound healing processes. Furthermore, the GOx/CAT cascade reaction producing consecutive fluxes of oxygen spatially targets the neutral wound tissue, and accelerates the proliferation and remodeling phases of wound healing by addressing the issues of hyperglycemia, hypoxia, and excessive oxidative stress. The shortened inflammatory phase temporally coupled with accelerated proliferation and remodeling phases significantly speed up the normal orchestrated wound-healing cascades. Remarkably, this Fe3O4-GOx-instructed spatial-temporal remodeling of DU microenvironment enables complete re-epithelialization of biofilm-infected wound in diabetic mice within 15 days while minimizing toxicity to normal tissues, exerting great transformation potential in clinical DU management. The proposed PNCC concept offers a new perspective for complex pathological microenvironment remodeling, and may provide a powerful modality for the treatment of microenvironment-associated diseases.

Haptoglobin is an acute-phase protein used as predicting diagnostic biomarker both in humans (i.e., diabetes, ovarian cancer, some neurological and cardiovascular disorders) and in animals (e.g., bovine mastitis). The latter is a frequent disease of dairy industry with staggering economical losses upon decreased milk production and increased health care costs. Early stage diagnosis of the associated diseases or inflammation onset is almost impossible by conventional analytical manners.

Precision medicine is the ultimate goal for current disease therapies, including tumor and infection. The lack of specific targeted drugs for liver cancer and the lack of specific anti-infective drugs in the treatment of diabetic foot ulcer with infection (DFI) are the representative obstacles in those 2 major diseases currently plaguing human beings. Inventing natural biocompatible polymers derived from natural materials is one of the main development directions of current bio-medical materials. Though previous studies have demonstrated the potential application values of human black hair-derived nanoparticles (HNP) in cancer, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection, and thrombosis scenarios treatments, it still has not solved the problem of low local therapeutic concentration and general targeting ability. Here, we firstly modified the HNP with membrane encapsulations, which endowed these dual-pure natural bio-fabricated materials with better targeting ability at the disease sites with no reduction in photothermal therapy (PTT) effect. HNP coated by red blood cell membrane loaded with DSPE-PEG-cRGD peptide for the therapeutic application of liver cancer greatly prolonged in vivo circulation time and enhanced local targeting efficacy as well as low toxicity; HNP coated by the murine macrophage cell membrane (RAWM) for the DFIs treatment greatly promoted the adhesive ability of HNP on the bacteria and thereby improved the killing effect. Briefly, the appropriate cell membranes camouflaged HNP nanomedicine has the characteristics of excellent photothermal effect, an all-natural source with excellent biocompatibility and easy access, which is expected to have huge potential in both benign and malignant diseases.

Tuberculosis accounted for 8.7 million new cases in 2011 and continues to be one of the leading human infectious diseases. Burdensome is the increasing rate of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) and the difficulties created for treatment and public health control programs, especially in developing countries. Resistance to rifampicin (RIF), a first line antibiotic, is commonly associated with point mutations within the rpoB gene of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) whose detection is considered the best early molecular predictor for MDRTB. Gold nanoparticles functionalized with thiol-modified oligonucleotides (Au-nanoprobes) have shown the potential to provide a rapid and sensitive detection method for Mtb and single base alterations associated with antibiotic resistance, namely in rpoB gene associated to RIF resistance.

Exosomes are small, cellular membrane-derived vesicles with a diameter of 50-150 nm. Exosomes are considered ideal drug delivery systems with a wide range of applications in various diseases, including cancer. However, nonspecific delivery of therapeutic agents by exosomes in vivo remains challenging. Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) is an epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase, and its overexpression is usually associated with cell survival and tumor progression in various cancers. In this study, we aim to develop novel exosomes with dual HER2-targeting ability as a nanoparticle delivery vehicle to enhance antitumor efficacy in vivo.

Functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) have become the focus of increased research interest, particularly in their application as tools in different areas, such as the biomedical field. Despite the benefits associated with functionalization of MWCNT, particularly in overcoming issues relating to solubility, several studies have demonstrated that these functionalized nanoparticles display different toxicity profiles. For this study, we aim to compare NR8383 cells responses to three well-characterized MWCNT with varying functional groups. This study employed cytotoxicity assays, transcriptomics and proteomics to assess their toxicity using NR8383 rat alveolar macrophages as an in vitro model. The study findings indicated that all MWCNT altered ribosomal protein translation, cytoskeleton arrangement and induced pro-inflammatory response. Only functionalized MWCNT alter mTOR signaling pathway in conjunction with increased Lamtor gene expression. Furthermore, the type of functionalization was also important, with cationic MWCNT activating the transcription factor EB and inducing autophagy while the anionic MWCNT altering eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4 (EIF4) and phosphoprotein 70 ribosomal protein S6 kinase (p70S6K) signaling pathway as well as upregulation Tlr2 gene expression. This study proposes that MWCNT toxicity mechanisms are functionalization dependent and provides evidence that inflammatory response is a key event of carbon nanotubes toxicity.

Phellinus linteus (PL), which is a typical medicinal fungus, has been shown to have antitumor and anti-inflammatory activities. However, studies on the effect of anti-photoaging are limited. Studies have shown that exosome-like nanovesicles are functional components of many medicinal plants, and miRNAs in exosome-like nanovesicles play a cross-kingdom regulatory role. At present, research on fungi exosome-like nanovesicles (FELNVs) is few.