Toward Clinical Applications: Transforming Nonantibiotic Antibacterials into Effective Next-Generation Supramolecular Therapeutics

Antibiotic resistance is a major driver of morbidity and mortality worldwide, necessitating alternatives. Due to their mechanism of action, bacteriophages, endolysins, and antimicrobial peptides (coined herein as nonantibiotic antibacterials, NAA) have risen to tackle this problem and led to paradigms in treating antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. However, their clinical applications remain challenging and have been seriously hampered by cytotoxicity, instability, weak bioactivity, low on-target bioavailability, high pro-inflammatory responses, shorter half-life, and circulatory properties. Hence, to transit preclinical phases and beyond, it has become imperative to radically engineer these alternatives into innovative and revolutionary therapeutics to overcome recalcitrant infections. This perspective highlights the promise of these agents, their limitations, promising designs, nanotechnology, and delivery approaches that can be harnessed to transform these agents. Finally, I provide an outlook on the remaining challenges that need to be tackled for their widespread clinical administration.

Anomalous displacement reaction for synthesizing above-room-temperature and air-stable vdW ferromagnet PtTe2Ge1/3

Emerging van der Waals (vdW) magnets provide a paradise for the exploration of magnetism in the ultimate two-dimensional (2D) limit, and the construction of integrated spintronic devices, and have become a research frontier in the field of low-dimensional materials. To date, prototypical vdW magnets based on metals of the first transition series (e.g. V, Cr, Mn and Fe) and chalcogen elements suffer from rapid oxidation restricted by the Hard-Soft-Acid-Base principle, as well as low Curie temperatures (T C), which has become a generally admitted challenge in 2D spintronics. Here, starting from air-unstable Cr2Ge2Te6 vdW thin flakes, we synthesize Ge-embedded PtTe2 (namely PtTe2Ge1/3) with superior air stability, through the displacement reaction in the Cr2Ge2Te6/Pt bilayer. In this process, the anomalous substitution of Cr with Pt in the thermal diffusion is inverse to the metal activity order, which can be attributed to the compatibility between soft-acid (Pt) and soft-base (Te) elements. Meanwhile, the layered uniform insertion of Ge unbalances Pt-Te bonds and introduces long-range ordered ferromagnetism with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and a Curie temperature above room temperature. Our work demonstrates the anti-metal-activity-order reaction tendency unique in 2D transition-metal magnets and boosts progress towards practical 2D spintronics.

Fabrication of infrared linear arrays of InAs planar avalanche photodiodes

We report a, to the best of our knowledge, new device fabrication process for 128-pixel linear arrays of InAs planar avalanche photodiodes, utilizing selective area implantation of Beryllium ions into epitaxially-grown InAs wafers. The pixels exhibited uniform avalanche gain and responsivity. Room temperature responsivity values at 1550 and 2004 nm wavelengths are 0.49 ± 0.017 and 0.89 ± 0.024 A/W, respectively. Reverse dark current-voltage and avalanche gain measurements were carried out at different temperatures (from room temperature to 150 K). At 200 K at -15 V reverse bias, the pixels exhibited an avalanche gain of 22.5 ± 1.18 and dark current density of 0.68 ± 0.48 A/cm².

Nanoassembled Interface for Dynamics Tailoring

The properties and performance of solid nanomaterials in heterogeneous chemical reactions are significantly influenced by the interface between the nanomaterial and environment. Oriented tailoring of interfacial dynamics, that is, modifying the shared boundary for mass and energy exchange has become a common goal for scientists. Although researchers have designed and constructed an abundance of nanomaterials with excellent performances for the tailoring of reaction dynamics, a complete understanding of the mechanism of nanomaterial-environment interfacial interaction still remains elusive. To predictively understand the nanomaterial-environment relationship over a wide range of time scale, a deep and dynamic insight is required urgently. In this Account, our recent works including advances in the design and construction of nanoassembled interfaces and understanding the dynamic interaction mechanisms between different combinations of nanoparticle (NP) assembly environment interfaces for tailoring the reaction dynamics.NP assemblies with well-defined structures and compositions are inherently suitable for replacing bulk-type nanomaterials for the research on interfaces. We primarily introduced two most relevant nanoassembled surfaces that were fabricated in our laboratory, namely, ordered self-assembly interface and animate nanoassembled interface. The disordered nanoparticles can be arranged into an ordered superlattice based on the self-assembly method and patterned-assembly method. In addition, we used NPs with flexible properties to construct three-dimensional (3D) animate assemblies. On the basis of a thorough understanding of the structure-property correlation, a series of nanoassembled interfaces with various structures have been developed for practice. In comparison with traditional nanomaterial-environment interfaces, the nanoassembled interfaces can change the mode of contact between the nanomaterial and environment, thereby maximizing the number of active sites and driving interferent/product off the nanoassembled interface. The geometry, porosity, and deformable/motional properties in the nanoassembled interface can be applied to enhance the mass transfer dynamics in the chemical reaction. Moreover, the nanoassembled interface can be used to strengthen the affinity between the NP assemblies and targets, thereby enhancing the adsorption efficiency. As shown in these examples, the nanoassembled interface can effectively change the speed, intensity, and mode of interactions between the NP assemblies and environment in spatiotemporal scales.The overall performance of the interfacial dynamics can be improved by the nanoassembled interface, thereby facilitating practical application in flowing systems. We have extended the applications of nanoassembled interfaces from simple adsorption to complex reactions in flowing systems, including in vivo magnetic resonance imaging, electrocatalytic gas evolution reaction, bacterial capture, sensing of exhaled volatile organic compounds, and heterogeneous catalysis. Our current endeavors to explore the applicability of animate nanoassembled interfaces for dynamic tailoring have widened the scope of research, and attempts to construct intelligent interfaces for applications are underway.