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CANCER NANOMEDICINE

Killing cancer cells by rupturing their lysosomes

Nanoparticles covered with a mix of positively and negatively charged ligands aggregate into supraparticles in the lysosomes of cancer cells, disrupting the integrity of the lysosomal membrane and killing the cells without involving any anticancer drugs.

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Fig. 1: Cascaded aggregation of mixed-charge nanoparticles when interacting with cancer cells.

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Correspondence to Younan Xia.

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Qiu, J., Xia, Y. Killing cancer cells by rupturing their lysosomes. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 252–253 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0639-z

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