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mRNA‐based therapeutics increasingly demonstrate significant potential in treating various diseases, including infectious diseases, cancers, and genetic disorders. Effective delivery systems are crucial for advancing mRNA therapeutics. Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) serve as an excellent carrier, widely validated for their safety and tolerability in commercially available mRNA vaccines. Standard LNPs typically consist of four components: ionizable lipids (ILs), helper lipids, cholesterol, and polyethylene glycol‐lipids (PEG‐lipids), with the structural design of ILs gradually becoming a focal point of research interest. The chemical structures and formulations of the other components also significantly affect the delivery efficiency, targeting specificity, and stability of LNPs. The complex formulations of LNPs may hinder the clinical transformation of mRNA therapeutics and have raised widespread concerns about their safety. This review aims to summarize the progress of LNPs‐based mRNA therapeutics in clinical trials, focusing on adverse effects that occurred during these trials. It also discusses representative innovations in LNP components, highlighting challenges and potential ways in this research field. We firmly believe this review will promote further improvements and designs of LNP compositions to optimize mRNA therapeutics. This article is categorized under:Nanotechnology Approaches to Biology > Nanoscale Systems in BiologyBiology‐Inspired Nanomaterials > Lipid‐Based Structures [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) with aggregation-induced emission photosensitizers (AIE-PSs) has attracted increasing attention for their enhanced fluorescence and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation abilities upon aggregation. However, it is difficult for AIE-PSs to simultaneously achieve long-wavelength excitation (>600 nm) and high singlet oxygen quantum yield, which restricts their application in deep-tissue PDT. In this study, four novel AIE-PSs were developed by appropriate molecular engineering, and their absorption peaks shifted from 478 to 540 nm with a tail extending to 700 nm. Meanwhile, their emission peaks were also moved from 697 nm to 779 nm with a tail extending over 950 nm. Importantly, their singlet oxygen quantum yields successfully increased from 0.61 to 0.89. Moreover, TBQ, the best photosensitizer developed by us, has been successfully applied to image-guided PDT in BALB/C mice bearing 4T1 breast cancer under red light (605 ± 5 nm) irradiation, with IC50 less than 2.5 μM at a low light dose (10.8 J cm−2). The success of this molecular engineering indicates that increasing the number of acceptors is more effective at red-shifting the absorption band of AIE-PSs than increasing the number of donors, and extending the π-conjugation of acceptors will red-shift the absorption–emission band, increase the maximum molar extinction coefficient, and improve the ROS generation ability of AIE-PSs, thus providing a new strategy for the design of advanced AIE-PSs for deep-tissue PDT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rapid, simple, and sensitive fluorescent immunochromatographic strip test (ICST) based on quantum dots (QDs) has been developed to detect 1-aminohydantoin (AHD), a major metabolite of nitrofurantoin in animal tissues. To achieve this, QD-labeled antibody conjugates, which consist of CdSe/ZnS QDs and monoclonal antibodies, were prepared by an activated ester method. Under optimal conditions, with the nitrophenyl derivative of AHD as the target, the ICST had a linear range from 0.1 to 100 ng/mL, with a correlation coefficient of 0.9656 and a 50% inhibitory concentration of 4.51 ng/mL. The limit of detection was 0.14 ng/g, which was below the minimum required performance limit of 1 μg/kg for AHD established by the European Commission. The recoveries for AHD ranged from 81.5% to 108.2%, with coefficients of variation below 13%, based on intraday and interday analysis. Furthermore, for AHD in real samples, the ICST showed high reliability and high correlation with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (correlation coefficient of 0.9916). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a novel and sensitive method based on a fluorescent ICST to detect AHD below the minimum required performance limit. The ICST demonstrated high reliability, and could be ideally suited for rapid, simple, and on-site screening of AHD contamination in animal tissues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics have garnered considerable attention due to their remarkable efficacy in the treatment of various diseases. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and RSV mRNA vaccine have been approved on the market. Due to the inherent nuclease-instability and negative charge of mRNA, delivery systems are developed to protect the mRNA from degradation and facilitate its crossing cell membrane to express functional proteins or peptides in the cytoplasm. However, the deficiency in transfection efficiency and targeted biological distribution are still the major challenges for the mRNA delivery systems. In this review, we first described the physiological barriers in the process of mRNA delivery and then discussed the design approach and recent advances in mRNA delivery systems with an emphasis on their tissue/cell-targeted abilities. Finally, we pointed out the existing challenges and future directions with deep insights into the design of efficient mRNA delivery systems. We believe that a high-precision targeted delivery system can greatly improve the therapeutic effects and bio-safety of mRNA therapeutics and accelerate their clinical transformations. This review may provide a new direction for the design of mRNA delivery systems and serve as a useful guide for researchers who are looking for a suitable mRNA delivery system., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2025 The Author(s). MedComm published by Sichuan International Medical Exchange & Promotion Association (SCIMEA) and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

mRNA-based therapeutics increasingly demonstrate significant potential in treating various diseases, including infectious diseases, cancers, and genetic disorders. Effective delivery systems are crucial for advancing mRNA therapeutics. Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) serve as an excellent carrier, widely validated for their safety and tolerability in commercially available mRNA vaccines. Standard LNPs typically consist of four components: ionizable lipids (ILs), helper lipids, cholesterol, and polyethylene glycol-lipids (PEG-lipids), with the structural design of ILs gradually becoming a focal point of research interest. The chemical structures and formulations of the other components also significantly affect the delivery efficiency, targeting specificity, and stability of LNPs. The complex formulations of LNPs may hinder the clinical transformation of mRNA therapeutics and have raised widespread concerns about their safety. This review aims to summarize the progress of LNPs-based mRNA therapeutics in clinical trials, focusing on adverse effects that occurred during these trials. It also discusses representative innovations in LNP components, highlighting challenges and potential ways in this research field. We firmly believe this review will promote further improvements and designs of LNP compositions to optimize mRNA therapeutics. This article is categorized under: Nanotechnology Approaches to Biology > Nanoscale Systems in Biology Biology-Inspired Nanomaterials > Lipid-Based Structures., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)