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Metastatic lung cancer is the leading cause of death for cancer patients. Although many chemical drugs were developed for cancer treatment, metastatic cancer mortality did not decrease significantly. In this article, we designed an Au clusters (AuCs) modified by cyclic RGD peptides which well target the integrin of human lung carcinoma cells (A549). The RGD-AuCs could well induce A549 cells apoptosis, but have no cytotoxicity on the human bronchial epithelial cells (16HBE), which are normal cells support respiratory system. The AuCs could be internalized and localized in the lysosomes of A549 tumor cells and further release into cytoplasma. We found the ROS level was increased by AuCs, and such high ROS level finally leads to depolarization of mitochondria. Eventually, the AuCs stimulating mitochondria related apoptosis pathway to induce A549 tumor cells apoptosis. We deduce the gold clusters would be an effective therapeutic candidate to against metastatic lung tumor in the future studies.

Dendritic cell-based immunotherapy, in which the antigen is effectively delivered to dendritic cells and then the dendritic cells stimulated by the antigen migrate to draining lymph nodes (DLNs) to...

While gold compound have been approved for Rheumatoid arthritis treatment as it well suppresses inflammatory cytokines of patients, no such treatment is currently available for COVID-19 treatment

Accurate diagnosis of cancer at an early stage is the key to reduce cancer mortality and improve survival. PET imaging has high sensitivity but low spatial resolution, while CT imaging has good spatial location information. Therefore, the combination of PET and CT imaging can provide complementary advantages to achieve accurate early diagnosis of tumors. However, currently developed PET or CT imaging agents have only a single function. Here, we designed and constructed a self-assembled lipid nanocapsule encapsulated with iodixanol and labeled with self-chelated

Traditional photodynamic therapy (PDT) requires external light excitation to produce reactive oxygen species (ROSs) for the treatment of tumors. Due to problems of light penetration, traditional PDT is limited by the location and depth of the tumor. In this study, we rationally designed and constructed a novel strategy to amplify the therapeutic effect of PDT. We prepared a chlorin-lipid nanovesicle based on the conjugates of chlorin e6 (Ce 6) and phospholipids, with the surface conjugating the aptamer for lung cancer targeting, GLT21.T. 131I-labeled bovine serum albumin (131I-BSA) was loaded into the chlorin-lipid nanovesicle cavity (131I-BSA@LCN-Apt). 131I not only plays a role in radiotherapy, but its Cerenkov radiation (CR), as an internal light source, can also stimulate Ce6 to produce ROSs without external light excitation. The in vitro and in vivo therapeutic effects in subcutaneous lung tumor models and orthotopic lung tumor models indicated that 131I-BSA@LCN-Apt produced a powerful anti-tumor effect through synergistic radiotherapy and CR-PDT, which almost caused complete tumor growth regression. After treatment, the survival time of the mice was significantly prolonged. During the treatment, no obvious side effects were found by histopathology of important organs, hematology and biochemistry analysis except the decrease of the white blood cell count (WBC). The study provides a major tool for deep-seated tumors to obtain amplified therapeutic effects by synergistic radiotherapy and CR-PDT without the use of any external light source.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by synovial inflammation and progressive cartilage and bone damage. In our previous studies, we found that Au clusters using glutathione as a template (GACs) produced profound anti-inflammatory effects in vitro on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation in mouse macrophage RAW 264.7 cells and type II collagen-induced rat RA in vivo. In this study, we examined whether the template for Au clusters synthesis has an effect on its anti-inflammatory effect and whether Au nanoparticles with larger particle diameter produce the same anti-inflammatory effect. We synthesized Au clusters with bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a template (BACs), Au clusters with glutathione (GSH) as a template (GACs), and Au nanoparticles with glutathione as a template (GANs) and compared their anti-inflammatory effects in vitro and in vivo. These three Au nanomaterials can inhibit the production of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced proinflammatory mediators and ameliorate type II collagen-induced rat RA. However, although the three Au nanomaterials produced similar anti-inflammatory effects, the GANs with larger particle sizes were less stable in vivo and accumulated in the peritoneum after intraperitoneal injection, resulting in poor absorption in vivo. The BACs showed relatively high liver accumulation due to the larger molecular weight of the outer shell. Therefore, we believe that the GACs are potential reliable nanodrugs for the treatment of RA.