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Despite great advances, the development of cancer drugs that can efficiently kill cancer cells while protecting noncancer cells has not been achieved. By using only dietary antioxidants vitamin C (VC) and (R)-(+)-lipoic acid (LA), we herein develop a nanodrug VC@cLAV featuring the above function. After entering cells, cLAV dissociates into LA and DHLA (dihydrolipoic acid, reduced form of LA) and releases VC and DHA (dehydroascorbate, oxidized form of VC). In cancer cells, the two redox pairs recycle each other and dramatically promote the intracellular reactive oxygen species production to kill cancer cells at low doses comparable to cytotoxic drugs. Oppositely in noncancer cells, the LA/DHLA and VC/DHA pairs exert anti-oxidant action to actively protect the organism by preventing the normal cells from oxidative stress and repairing cells suffering from oxidative stress. When compared with the first-line cytotoxic drug, VC@cLAV displayed superior therapeutic outcomes yet without side effects in diverse tumor models including patient-derived xenograft (PDX). This drug with efficient cancer cell killing and noncancer cell protection represents a new cancer therapy.

Designing a novel biomaterial for wound healing is based on biocompatibility and excellent mechanical strength. In this study, bioactive glass (BG) and zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) have been incorporated into poly(ε-caprolactone)/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PCL/PVA) composite skin scaffolds via microfluidic electrospinning. Interestingly, the addition of ZIF-8 further strengthens the BG stability and demonstrates better antibacterial effects. Utilizing the slow release of Zn, Ca, and Si ions, it also significantly promotes growth factor expression and skin regeneration. In addition, it is further demonstrated by in vitro and in vivo studies that the prepared composite skin scaffolds possess excellent biocompatibility, antibacterial capabilities, and mechanical properties. The prepared BG/ZIF-8-loaded scaffold possesses high tensile strength (26 MPa) and excellent antibacterial properties (achieves 89.64 and 78.8% inhibition of E. coliand S. aureus, respectively), and cell viability increased by 51.2%. More importantly, the wound shrinkage of the BG/ZIF-8-loaded scaffold is better than that of an unloaded scaffold, and the shrinkage rates of PCL/PVA@BG/ZIF-8(1 wt %) group is 95% with 2.2 mm granulation growth thickness within 12 days. Thus, the composite skin scaffold loaded with BG/ZIF-8 prepared by microfluidic electrospinning provides a new perspective for accelerating wound healing and is a potential novel therapeutic strategy for efficient wound healing.

A micro/nanofluidic enrichment device combined with the Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) technique has been developed for sensitive detection of trace quantities of protein. In this approach, sample protein is first adsorbed on gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to occupy part of the AuNP surface. Then, dye-labeled protein is added, which adsorbs to the residual active sites of the AuNP surface, saturating the AuNP surface with protein molecules. The unadsorbed dye-labeled protein remains in a free state in the system. Keeping a fixed amount of dye-labeled protein, a high concentration of sample protein leads to more free dye-labeled protein molecules remaining in the system, and thus a larger photoluminescence signal. Under the action of an electric field, the free dye-labeled protein molecules can be efficiently enriched in front of the nanochannel of a micro/nanofluidic chip, which greatly amplifies the magnitude of the photoluminescence and improves the detection sensitivity. As a demonstration, bovine serum albumin (BSA) and fluorescein isothiocyanate-labeled dog serum albumin (FITC-DSA) are used as sample and fluorescent proteins, respectively. Using the proposed strategy, a detection limit of BSA as low as 2.5 pg/mL can be achieved, which is more than 103times lower than the reported minimums in most sensitive commercial protein quantification methods.