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Much of current clinical interest has focused on mRNA therapeutics for the treatment of lung-associated diseases, such as infections, genetic disorders, and cancers. However, the safe and efficient delivery of mRNA therapeutics to the lungs, especially to different pulmonary cell types, is still a formidable challenge. In this paper, we proposed a cationic lipid pair (CLP) strategy, which utilized the liver-targeted ionizable lipid and its derived quaternary ammonium lipid as the CLP to improve liver-to-lung tropism of four-component lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for in vivo mRNA delivery. Interestingly, the structure-activity investigation identified that using liver-targeted ionizable lipids with higher mRNA delivery performance and their derived lipid counterparts is the optimal CLP design for improving lung-targeted mRNA delivery. The CLP strategy was also verified to be universal and suitable for clinically available ionizable lipids such as SM-102 and ALC-0315 to develop lung-targeted LNP delivery systems. Moreover, we demonstrated that CLP-based LNPs were safe and exhibited potent mRNA transfection in pulmonary endothelial and epithelial cells. As a result, we provided a powerful CLP strategy for shifting the mRNA delivery preference of LNPs from the liver to the lungs, exhibiting great potential for broadening the application scenario of mRNA-based therapy.

Mo2C MXene is a two-dimensional material, which can be applied as a co-catalyst to significantly enhance the photocatalytic performance of CdS for H2 production. To understand the effect of the synthesis process of Mo2C MXene nanosheets on the catalytic performance, in this paper, Mo2C MXene was made from Mo2Ga2C by hydrothermal etching in different etchants. Diverse cations (Li+, Na+, K+, or NH4+) in etchants resided on the surface of Mo2C MXene nanosheets. Then, the samples were used to construct CdS/Mo2C-MXene composites for photocatalytic H2 evolution. Among them, Mo2C MXene with Li+ shows the best photocatalytic H2 production rate of 22,048 μmol g–1 h–1 under visible light. The remarkable performance arises from the modification at the nanoscale of Mo2C MXene with Li+, thereby resulting in better photoabsorption behavior, high separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers, and fast charge transfer at the heterointerface. Moreover, the energy band structures explain that the changes of band gap and the position of the conductive band in the photocatalyst tuned by cations are also key to affect photocatalytic activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]