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Nanoparticle-mediated photoporation is used to temporarily permeabilize cell membranes for intracellular delivery of macromolecules, but cell exposure to nanoparticles might cause cellular damage and hamper application of the technique to therapeutic cell engineering. Here the authors show that, under photothermal heating, nanofibre-embedded iron oxide nanoparticles can be used to deliver effector macromolecules to different types of cells, in a contactless manner, with no cellular toxicity or diminished therapeutic potency.
DNA nanoswitch calipers can measure distances within single molecules with atomic resolution. Applied to single-molecule proteomics, they can enable the identification and quantification of molecules in trace samples via mechanical fingerprinting.
Quantum photonics offers a scalable approach to advanced quantum-information processing. Based on deterministic photon–emitter interfaces, this Review presents a road ahead for resource-efficient hardware architectures towards applications in quantum communication and quantum computing.
This Perspective relates seemingly diverse examples of chemically driven non-equilibrium systems (dissipative assembly, self-replicators, molecular motors, oscillators) using a common conceptual framework, and discusses how catalytic cycles can be coupled to dynamic processes.
The effective absorption spectrum of metal-bound molecules and a rich plasmon-driven chemistry landscape are constructed by monitoring the interfacial environment of a thousand single nanocavities with slightly varied resonance energies.
The stimulation of interferon genes (STING) pathway with STING agonists such as cyclic dinucleotides (CDNs) has emerged as a promising immunotherapeutic approach. Here, the authors show that Mn2+ can amplify the STING-promoted anti-tumour immune response in challenging murine tumour models by coordinating with CDNs and self-assembling into nanoparticles that can be delivered locally and systemically.
Type I interferons (IFNs) have strong antitumour activity yet their clinical use is limited by their off-target toxicity and by their effect on immune evasion. Here the authors design a biomimetic nanoparticle loaded with an IFN inducer, which can at the same time replenish intratumoural IFNs and reduce their immunosuppressive activity, showing therapeutic efficacy in several animal tumour models.
Gas vesicles are air-filled protein nanostructures naturally expressed by certain bacteria and archaea to achieve cellular buoyancy. Here the authors show that, under the stimulation of pulsed ultrasound, targeted gas vesicles and gas vesicles expressed in genetically modified bacteria and mammalian cells release nanobubbles that, collapsing, lead to controlled mechanical damage of the surrounding biological milieu, demonstrating that, under focused ultrasound actuation, gas vesicles have potential applications as therapeutic agents.
Moiré-trapped interlayer excitons in a transition metal dichalcogenide heterobilayer serve as a sensitive optical probe of carrier filling in their immediate environment to characterize the doping of the moiré superlattice.
Tumours that grow on organ surfaces are difficult to eradicate as the complex topology of underlying tissues might hamper accessibility to tumour foci even after surgery. In this paper the authors engineer a peptide-based hydrogel that can be applied on surface tumours before or after resection, conform to the tissue underneath and release therapeutics.