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Liver cancer, characterized as a kind of malignant tumor within the digestive system, poses great health harm, and immune escape stands out as an important reason for its occurrence and development. Chemokines, pivotal in guiding immune cells' migration, is necessary to initiate and deliver an effective anti-tumor immune response. Therefore, understanding the chemotactic environment and identifying chemokines that regulate recruitment of immune cells to the tumor microenvironment (TME) are critical to improve current immunotherapy interventions. Herein, we report a well-defined inverse opal scaffold generated with a microfluidic emulsion template for the construction of a vascularized liver tumor model, offering insights into immune cells' recruitment. Due to the excellent 3D porous morphology of the inverse opal scaffold, human hepatocellular carcinoma cells can aggregate in the pores of the scaffold to form uniform multicellular tumor spheroids. More attractively, the vascularized liver tumor model can be achieved by constructing a 3D co-culture system involving endothelial cells and hepatocellular carcinoma cells. The results demonstrate that the 3D co-cultured tumor cells increase the neutrophil chemokines remarkably and recruit neutrophils to tumor tissues, then promote tumor progression. This approach opens a feasible avenue for realizing a vascularized liver tumor model with a reliable immune microenvironment close to that of a solid tumor of liver cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photocatalytic CO2 reduction to hydrocarbon fuels through solar energy provides a feasible channel for reducing CO2 emission and resource depletion. Nevertheless, severe charge recombination and high energy barrier limit the CO2 reduction efficiency. Herein, a surface amine‐functionalized SnO2 with oxygen vacancies (A‐Vo‐SnO2) is fabricated to achieve visible‐light‐driven photocatalytic CO2 reduction. Specifically, amino groups modified onto the surface of the catalyst can provide more active sites to promote the adsorption of CO2. Meanwhile, the synchronously induced oxygen defect level reduces the band‐gap energy and expands the light‐absorption region from UV light to visible light. The oxygen vacancies can modulate the electronic structure and work as the separation centers of spatial charges, thus promoting the interfacial charge transfer efficiency and providing more catalytic sites, as evidenced by experimental observation and theoretical calculation. As expected, this A‐Vo‐SnO2 exhibits a CH4 evolution rate of 17.27 µmol g−1 h−1 without adding sacrificial agent and co‐catalyst, much higher than 5.98 µmol g−1 h−1 of pure SnO2. This work can provide significant inspiration for the design of defect engineering based on visible‐light‐driven photocatalysts towards photocatalytic CO2 conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patches with the capacity of controllable delivering active molecules toward the wound bed to promote wound healing are expectant all along. Herein, a novel porous metal‐organic framework (MOF) microneedle (MN) patch enabling photothermal‐responsive nitric oxide (NO) delivery for promoting diabetic wound healing is presented. As the NO‐loadable copper‐benzene‐1,3,5‐tricarboxylate (HKUST‐1) MOF is encapsulated with graphene oxide (GO), the resultant NO@HKUST‐1@GO microparticles (NHGs) are imparted with the feature of near‐infrared ray (NIR) photothermal response, which facilitate the controlled release of NO molecules. When these NHGs are embedded in a porous PEGDA‐MN, the porous structure, larger specific surface area, and sufficient mechanical strength of the integrated MN could promote a more accurate and deeper delivery of NO molecules into the wound site. By applying the resultant NHG‐MN to the wound of a type I diabetic rat model, the authors demonstrate that it is capable of accelerating vascularization, tissue regeneration, and collagen deposition, indicating its bright prospect applied in wound healing and other therapeutic scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]