Improved Reactive Oxygen Species Generation by Chiral Co3 O4 Supraparticles under Electromagnetic Fields

Chiral silver nanoparticles with surface-anchored L(D)-Cys exhibit dissimilar biological characteristics in vitro but not in vivo

This work investigated the influence of surface chirality on cellular internalization, cytotoxicity, and tissue distribution of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). D-cysteine and L-cysteine are chiral forms of the amino acid cysteine. These enantiomers exhibit distinct spatial arrangements, with D-cysteine having a different configuration from L-cysteine. This structural dissimilarity can lead to variations in how these forms interact with biological systems, potentially impacting their cytotoxic responses. Four distinct types of AgNPs were synthesized, each possessing a unique surface coating: pristine AgNPs (pAgNPs), L-cysteine coated AgNPs (AgNPs@L-Cys), D-cysteine coated AgNPs (AgNPs@D-Cys), and racemic AgNPs coated with both L-Cys and D-Cys (AgNPs@L/D-Cys). We found chiral-dependent cytotoxicity of AgNPs on J774A.1 cells. Specifically, AgNPs@L-Cys exhibited the highest toxicity, and AgNPs@D-Cys exhibited the lowest toxicity. Meanwhile, the cellular uptake of the AgNPs correlated nicely with their cytotoxicity, with AgNPs@L-Cys being internalized to the greatest extent while AgNPs@D-Cys displays the least internalization. Scavenger receptors and clathrin predominantly mediate the cellular internalization of these AgNPs. Strikingly, the dissimilar cellular internalization and cytotoxicity of AgNPs with different chirality were eliminated upon protein corona coverage. Notably, following intravenous injection in mice, these four types of AgNPs showed similar patterns among various organs due to the inevitable protein adsorption in the bloodstream. These findings underscored the pivotal role of surface chirality in governing the biological interactions and toxicity of AgNPs.

Tea polyphenol-derived nanomedicine for targeted photothermal thrombolysis and inflammation suppression

Thrombotic diseases impose a significant global health burden, and conventional drug-based thrombolytic therapies are encumbered by the risk of bleeding complications. In this study, we introduce a novel drug-free nanomedicine founded on tea polyphenols nanoparticles (TPNs), which exhibits multifaceted capabilities for localized photothermal thrombolysis. TPNs were synthesized through a one-pot process under mild conditions, deriving from the monomeric epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). Within this process, indocyanine green (ICG) was effectively encapsulated, exploiting multiple intermolecular interactions between EGCG and ICG. While both TPNs and ICG inherently possessed photothermal potential, their synergy significantly enhanced photothermal conversion and stability. Furthermore, the nanomedicine was functionalized with cRGD for targeted delivery to activated platelets within thrombus sites, eliciting robust thrombolysis upon laser irradiation across diverse thrombus types. Importantly, the nanomedicine's potent free radical scavenging abilities concurrently mitigated vascular inflammation, thus diminishing the risk of disease recurrence. In summary, this highly biocompatible multifunctional nanomaterial holds promise as a comprehensive approach that combines thrombolysis with anti-inflammatory actions, offering precision in thrombosis treatment.

Bionanoengineered 2D monoelemental selenene for piezothrombolysis

Thrombosis-related diseases represent the leading causes of disability or death worldwide. However, conventional thrombolytic therapies are subjected to narrow therapeutic window, short circulation half-life and bleeding. Herein, we rationally design and develop a safe and efficient nonpharmaceutical thrombolysis strategy based on a specific piezocatalytic effect arising from platelet membrane (PM)-conjugated two-dimensional (2D) piezoelectric selenene, Se-PM nanosheets (NSs). The 2D selenene is fabricated from nonlayered bulk selenium powder by a facile liquid-phase exfoliation method, and the PM conjugation confers selenene with the distinct thrombus-homing feature. Under ultrasonic activation, the piezoelectric characteristic of selenene triggers electrons and holes separation, resulting in generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by reacting with surrounding H2O and O2 in the thrombosis microenvironment for thrombolysis. Both systematic in vitro and in vivo assessments demonstrate that the biocompatible Se-PM NSs efficiently degrade erythrocytes, fibrin and artificial blood clots under ultrasound irradiation. Compared to the clinical thrombolytic drug urokinase plasminogen activator, the engineered Se-PM NSs possess excellent thrombolytic efficacy by single treatment in the tail thrombosis animal model without bleeding risk. The engineered Se-PM nanoplatform marks an exciting jumping-off point for research into the application of piezocatalysis in clinical treatment of thrombosis.

Chiral Mesostructured Inorganic Materials with Optical Chiral Response

Fabricating chiral inorganic materials and revealing their unique quantum confinement-determined optical chiral responses are crucial tasks in the multidisciplinary fields of chemistry, physics, and biology. The field of chiral mesostructured inorganic materials started from the synthesis of individual nanocrystals and evolved to include their assembly from metals, semiconductors, ceramics, and inorganic salts endowed with various chiral structures ranging from atomic to micron scales. This tutorial review highlights the recent research on chiral mesostructured inorganic materials, especially the novel expression of mesostructured chirality and endowed optical chiral response, and it may inspire us with new strategies for the design of chiral inorganic materials and new opportunities beyond the traditional applications of chirality. Fabrication methods for chiral mesostructured inorganic materials are classified according to chirality type, scale, and symmetry-breaking mechanism. Special attention is given to highlight systems with original discoveries, exceptional phenomena, or unique mechanisms of optical chiral response for left- and right-handedness.

Chiral Iron Oxide Supraparticles Enable Enantiomer-Dependent Tumor-Targeted Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The chemical, physical and biological effects of chiral nanomaterials have inspired general interest and demonstrated important advantages in fundamental science. Here, chiral iron oxide supraparticles (Fe3 O4 SPs) modified by chiral penicillamine (Pen) molecules with g-factor of ≈2 × 10-3 at 415 nm are fabricated, and these SPs act as high-quality magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents. Therein, the transverse relaxation efficiency and T2 -MRI results demonstrated chiral Fe3 O4 SPs have a r2 relaxivity of 157.39 ± 2.34 mM-1 ·S-1 for D-Fe3 O4 SPs and 136.21 ± 1.26 mM-1 ·S-1 for L-Fe3 O4 SPs due to enhanced electronic transition dipole moment for D-Fe3 O4 SPs compared with L-Fe3 O4 SPs. The in vivo MRI results show that D-Fe3 O4 SPs exhibit two-fold lower contrast ratio than L-Fe3 O4 SPs, which enhances targeted enrichment in tumor tissue, such as prostate cancer, melanoma and brain glioma tumors. Notably, it is found that D-Fe3 O4 SPs have 7.7-fold higher affinity for the tumor cell surface receptor cluster-of-differentiation 47 (CD47) than L-Fe3 O4 SPs. These findings uncover that chiral Fe3 O4 SPs act as a highly effective MRI contrast agent for targeting and imaging broad tumors, thus accelerating the practical application of chiral nanomaterials and deepening the understanding of chirality in biological and non-biological environments.

Advances of nanomedicine in treatment of atherosclerosis and thrombosis

Atherosclerosis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory vascular disease. Myocardial ischemia originated from AS is the main cause of cardiovascular diseases, one of the major factors contributing to the global disease burden. AS is typically quiescent until occurrence of plaque rupture and thrombosis, leading to acute coronary syndrome and sudden death. Currently, clinical diagnostic techniques suffer from major pitfalls including lack of accuracy and specificity, which makes it rather difficult for drugs to directly target plaques to achieve therapeutic effect. Therefore, how to accurately diagnose and effectively intervene vulnerable AS plaques to achieve accurate delivery of drugs has become an urgent and evolving clinical problem. With the rapid development of nanomedicine and nanomaterials, nanotechnology has shown unique advantages in monitoring vulnerable plaques and thrombus and improving drug efficacy. Recent studies have shown that application of nanoparticle drug delivery system can booster the safety and effectiveness of drug therapy, and molecular imaging technology and nanomedicine also exhibit high clinical application potentials in disease diagnosis. Therefore, nanotechnology provides another promising avenue for diagnosis and treatment of AS and thrombosis, and has shown excellent performance in the development of targeted drug therapy and biomaterials. In this review, the research progress, challenges and prospects of nanotechnology in AS and thrombosis are discussed, expecting to provide new ideas for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of AS and thrombosis.

Chiral Ruthenium Nanozymes with Self-Cascade Reaction Driven the NO Generation Induced Macrophage M1 Polarization Realizing the Lung Cancer "Cocktail Therapy"

Macrophages as the main cause of cancer immunosuppression, how to effectively induce macrophage M1 polarization remain the major challenge in lung cancer therapy. Herein, inspired by endogenous reactions, a strategy is proposed to coactivate macrophage M1 polarization by reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric oxide (NO) with self-autocatalytic cascade reaction. To enhance the generation of NO and ROS, NO Precursor-Arginine as capping agents for inducing synthesis two kinds of chiral ruthenium nanozyme (D/L-Arginine@Ru). Under the properties of Ru nanozymes through synchronously mimicking the activity of oxidase and nitric oxide synthase (NOS), chiral Ru nanozyme can rapidly generate ¹ O₂ and O₂ at first stage, and then catalyze Arginine to produce sufficient NO, thus enhance macrophage M1 polarization to reverse tumor immunosuppression. Moreover, combination the antitumor activity of ¹ O₂ , NO, the chiral Ru nanozymes realize the "cocktail therapy" by inducing tumor cell apoptosis as well as ferroptosis. In addition, the chirality influences the bioactivity of Ru nanozymes that L-Arginine@Ru shows the better therapeutic effect with stronger catalytic activity and natural homology. It is hoped the high performance of chiral Ru nanozyme with "cocktail therapy" is an effective therapeutic reagent and can provide a feasible treatment strategy for tumor catalytic therapy.

Chiral Nanosilica Drug Delivery Systems Stereoselectively Interacted with the Intestinal Mucosa to Improve the Oral Adsorption of Insoluble Drugs

Chiral nanoparticles (NPs) with nanoscale rough surfaces have enormous application prospects in drug delivery. However, the stereoselective interactions between the chiral NPs and biosurfaces remain challenging and mysterious. Herein, we designed mesoporous silica nanocarriers (l/d/dl-TA-PEI@CMSN) exhibiting the same structural parameters (hydrophilic, electroneutral, spherical NPs, ∼120 nm) but different geometrical chirality as oral nanodrug delivery systems (Nano-DDS) for insoluble drugs nimesulide (NMS) and ibuprofen (IBU) and demonstrated their stereoselective interactions with the intestinal mucosa, that is, l-TA-PEI@CMSN as well as Nano-DDS in the l-configuration displayed apparent superior behaviors in multiple microprocesses associated with oral adsorption, including adhesion, penetration, adsorption, retention and uptake, causing by the stereomatching between the chiral mesostructures of NPs and the inherent chiral topologies of the biosurfaces. As hosting systems, l/d/dl-TA-PEI@CMSN effectively incorporated drugs in amorphous states and helped to overcome the stability, solubility and permeability bottlenecks of drugs. Subsequently, Nano-DDS in the l-configuration (including IBU/l-TA-PEI@CMSN and NMS/d-TA-PEI@CMSN owing to a chiral inversion) showed higher oral delivery efficiency of NMS and IBU evidenced by the larger relative bioavailability (1055.06% and 583.17%, respectively) and stronger anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. In addition, l/d/dl-TA-PEI@CMSN were stable, nonirritative, biocompatible and biodegradable, benefiting for their clinical applications. These findings provided insights into the rational design of functionalized Nano-DDS and contributed to the further knowledge in the field of chiral pharmaceutical science.

Chirality-Dependent Tumor Phototherapy Using Amino Acid-Engineered Chiral Phosphorene

Phosphorene, also known as black phosphorus nanosheet (BPNS), has been investigated as a nanoagent for tumor therapy. However, promoting its intracellular accumulation while preventing the cytoplasmic decomposition remains challenging. Herein, for the first time, we propose a chiral BPNS designed through surface engineering based on amino acids with high biocompatibility and an abundant source for application in chirality-dependent tumor phototherapy based on its intracellular metabolism. The advantage of using cysteine (Cys) over other amino acids was that its d, l, or dl-form could efficiently work as the chirality inducer to modify the BPNS through electrostatic interaction and prevent alterations in the intrinsic properties of the BPNS. In particular, d-Cys-BPNS displayed an approximately threefold cytotoxic effect on tumor cells compared with l-Cys-BPNS, demonstrating a chirality-dependent therapy behavior. d-Cys-BPNS not only promoted high intracellular content but also showed resistance to cytoplasmic decomposition. Cys-engineered BPNS also demonstrated chirality-dependent phototherapy effects on tumor-bearing mice, in proximity to the results in vitro. Chiral engineering is expected to open new avenues that could promote the use of BPNS in tumor phototherapy and boost chiral nanomedicine.

Chirality-Dependent Dynamic Evolution of the Protein Corona on the Surface of Quantum Dots

Elucidating the biological behavior of engineered nanoparticles, for example, the protein corona, is important for the development of safe and efficient nanomedicine, but our current understanding is still limited due to its highly dynamic nature and lack of adequate analytical tools. In the present work, we demonstrate the establishment of a fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based platform for monitoring the dynamic evolution behavior of the protein corona in complex biological media. With human serum albumin and lysozyme as the model serum proteins, the protein exchange process of the preformed corona on the surface of chiral quantum dots (QDs) upon feeding either individual protein or human serum was monitored in situ by FRET. Important parameters characterizing the evolution process of protein corona could be obtained upon quantitative analysis of FRET data. Further combining real-time FRET monitoring with gel electrophoresis experiments revealed that the nature of the protein initially adsorbed on the surface of QDs significantly affects the subsequent dynamic exchange behavior of the protein corona. Furthermore, our results also revealed that only a limited proportion of proteins are involved in the protein exchange, and the exchange process exhibits a significant dependence on the surface chirality of QDs. This work demonstrates the feasibility of FRET as a powerful tool to exploit the dynamic evolution process of the protein corona, which can provide theoretical guidance for further design of advanced nanomaterials for biomedical applications.

Six-Pointed Star Chiral Cobalt Superstructures with Strong Antibacterial Activity

Chiral inorganic nanomaterials have shown promise as a potential means of combating bacteria due to their high levels of biocompatibility, easy surface modification, and excellent optical properties. In this study, a diverse range of chiral hierarchical nanomaterials are prepared from Co²⁺ and L/D-Tartaric acid (Tar) ligands. By combining the ligands in different ratios, chiral Co superstructures (Co SS) are obtained with different morphologies, including chiral nanoflowers, chiral nanohanamaki, a chiral six-pointed star, a chiral fan shape, and a chiral fusiform shape. It is found that the chiral six-pointed star structures exhibit chiroptical activity across a broad range of wavelengths from 300 to 1300 nm and that the g-factor is as high as 0.033 with superparamagnetic properties. Under the action of electromagnetic fields, the chiral six-pointed star Co SS shows excellent killing ability against Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923). Compared to L-Co SS, D-Co SS shows stronger levels of antibacterial ability. It is found that the levels of reactive oxygen species generated by D-Co SS are 1.59-fold higher than L-Co SS which is attributed to chiral-induced spin selectivity effects. These findings are of significance for the further development of chiral materials with antibacterial properties.

Chirality at nanoscale for bioscience

In the rapidly expanding fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology, there is considerable interest in chiral nanomaterials, which are endowed with unusually strong circular dichroism. In this review, we summarize the principles of organization underlying chiral nanomaterials and generalize the recent advances in the main strategies used to fabricate these nanoparticles for bioscience applications. The creation of chirality from nanoscale building blocks has been investigated both experimentally and theoretically, and the tunability of chirality using external fields, such as light and magnetic fields, has allowed the optical activity of these materials to be controlled and their properties understood. Therefore, the specific recognition and potential applications of chiral materials in bioscience are discussed. The effects of the chirality of nanostructures on biological systems have been exploited to sense and cut molecules, for therapeutic applications, and so on. In the final part of this review, we examine the future perspectives for chiral nanomaterials in bioscience and the challenges posed by them.

Chiral Cu2-xSe Nanoparticles for Enhanced Synergistic Cancer Chemodynamic/Photothermal Therapy in the Second Near-Infrared Biowindow

Chiral nanomaterials have great potential in improving the clinical therapeutic effect due to the unique chiral selectivity of biosystems. However, such a promising therapeutic strategy has so far received little attention in cancer treatment. Here, we report a first chiral Fenton catalyst, d-/l-penicillamine-modified Cu_2-xSe nanoparticles (d-/l-NPs), for enhanced synergistic cancer chemodynamic therapy (CDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) under the second near-infrared (NIR-II) light irradiation. The chiral effect study of chiral Cu_2-xSe NPs on cancer cells shows that d-NPs exhibit stronger CDT-induced cytotoxicity than l -NPs due to the stronger internalization ability. Moreover, the hydroxyl radicals (^•OH) produced in d-NP-treated cancer cells via the CDT effect can be further improved by NIR-II light irradiation, thereby increasing the apoptosis of cancer cells. In vivo experiments show that, compared with l-NPs, d-NPs exhibit a stronger photothermal effect on the tumor site under NIR-II light irradiation and could completely eliminate the tumor under the synergistic effect of CDT and PTT. This work shows that the chirality of the surface ligand of the nanomaterials could significantly affect their cancer curative effect, which opens up a new way for the development of anticancer nanomedicine.

Rhombic dodecahedral gold nanoparticles: chiral sensing probes for naked-eye recognition of histidine enantiomers

Rhombic dodecahedral gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are found to have inherent chirality and can be used as colorimetric probes for naked-eye recognition of histidine enantiomers. Our findings are helpful for developing new GNP-based chiral sensing systems through tuning of nanoparticle morphology.