Human serum albumin (HSA) is an abundant plasma protein, which attracts great interest in the pharmaceutical industry since it can bind a remarkable variety of drugs impacting their delivery and efficacy and ultimately altering the drug’s pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties. Additionally, HSA is widely used in clinical settings as a drug delivery system due to its potential for improving targeting while decreasing the side effects of drugs. It is thus of great importance from the viewpoint of pharmaceutical sciences to clarify the structure, function, and properties of HSA–drug complexes. This review will succinctly outline the properties of binding site of drugs in IIA subdomain within the structure of HSA. We will also give an overview on the binding characterization of interactive association of drugs to human serum albumin that may potentially lead to significant clinical applications.

nonradiative energy loss mechanisms is highly desirable. We note that nonradiative recombination processes can also occur, for instance, because of poor contacts at the electrodes and, in the case of nongeminate recombination, not only via singlet 1 CT states but also via triplet 3 CT states [30] (a topic of future studies in our group).Up to now, the theoretical investigations of the NR recombination process in organic solar cells have been conducted under the Born-Oppenheimer (BO) approximation. [31][32][33][34][35] Thus, the possible impact of nonadiabatic vibronic coupling due to the breakdown of the BO approximation (for instance, in particular, when the energy difference between the initial and final states is small) has been neglected. We note that the nonradiative recombination via nonadiabatic coupling (NAC) was initially investigated in inorganic semiconductors in the early 1950s; there, it was found to play an important role in reducing the number of photogenerated carriers, suppressing luminescence, and decreasing the carrier lifetimes. [36][37][38] In molecular systems, the NR transition between two excited states or between an excited state and the ground state (with the same spin multiplicity) due to nonadiabatic coupling, is referred to as internal conversion. [39] In the case of organic emitters, the theoretical studies of Shuai and co-workers have demonstrated that internal conversion significantly limits the fluorescence quantum yields. [40,41] Compared to the energies (usually in the range 2.0-4.0 eV) of the first excited states in organic emitters, the 1 CT 1 -state energies are generally much lower in organic solar cells, on the order of 0.5-1.7 eV. [22,23,29,42] Thus, the nonadiabatic coupling between the 1 CT 1 state and the ground state can be expected to be large and it becomes important to evaluate the role that nonadiabatic coupling can play in the NR recombination of 1 CT 1 states at donor-acceptor interfaces. We emphasize that the NR recombination rates of interfacial 1 CT 1 states are difficult to measure experimentally since the distribution of the 1 CT 1 states in transient experiments is far from equilibrium. [43,44] Here, we have chosen the pentacene-C 60 interface as a re presentative system to study the factors determining the NR recombination rates in the context of OPV applications, since a large number of data are available from earlier experimental and theoretical studies. [31,[45][46][47][48] As the recombination process is expected to depend on the local D-A interface geometry, we have considered both edge-on and face-on interfacial orientations of the pentacene molecules relative to C 60 . Also, we consider two different packing modes of the pentacene molecules: (i) a herringbone-type packing (referred to as [P:herringbone] hereafter) directly taken from the pentacene crystal structure; [49] and (ii) a co-facial-type packing (referred to as [P:co-facial] Organic photovoltaic (OPV) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] devices have a great potential to become a low-cost technology fo...

Two G-quadruplex ligands [Pt(L(a))(DMSO)Cl] (Pt1) and [Pt(L(b))(DMSO)Cl] (Pt2) have been synthesized and fully characterized. The two complexes are more selective for SK-OV-3/DDP tumor cells versus normal cells (HL-7702). It was found that both Pt1 and Pt2 could be a telomerase inhibitor targeting G-quadruplex DNA. This is the first report demonstrating that telomeric, c-myc, and bcl-2 G-quadruplexes and caspase-3/9 preferred to bind with Pt2 rather than Pt1, which also can induce senescence and apoptosis. The different biological behavior of Pt1 and Pt2 may correlate with the presence of a 6-hydroxyl group in L(b). Importantly, Pt1 and Pt2 exhibited higher safety in vivo and more effective inhibitory effects on tumor growth in the HCT-8 and NCI-H460 xenograft mouse model, compared with cisplatin. Taken together, these mechanistic insights indicate that both Pt1 and Pt2 display low toxicity and could be novel anticancer drug candidates.

Water-soluble hyaluronic acid–hybridized polyaniline nanoparticles show effective photothermal ablation of cancer with targeted specificity.

No abstract

Carbon nanomaterials have received great attention from the scientific community over the past few decades because of their unique physical and chemical properties. In this minireview, we will summarize the recent progress of the use of various carbon nanomaterials in the field of cancer phototherapy. The structural characteristics of each category and the surface functionalization strategies of these nanomaterials will be briefly introduced before focusing on their therapeutic applications. Recent advances on their use in photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, and combined phototherapies are presented. Moreover, a few challenges and perspectives on the development of carbon nanomaterials for future theranostics are also discussed.

A novel plasmonic gold nanocarrier using a modular RNA scaffold significantly improves delivery efficiency into diverse human cells, as presented by Norbert O. Reich and co-workers in article number 1602473. The orthogonal positioning of cell targeting peptides and functional RNA provides unprecedented control in the delivery of biologically active RNA. NIR light-triggered RNA release with spatio-temporal control further enhances the RNA delivery efficiency. Plasmon-Enhanced Spectroscopy Shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SHINERS) is invented to break the long-standing material-and substrate-specific limitations in SERS (surface-enhanced Raman scattering), as presented by Jian-Feng Li and co-workers in article number 1601598. The metal nanoparticle acts as a plasmonic nanoantenna for near field amplification, and the ultra-thin dielectric shell prevents the interference of environmental species. Single Crystals Perovskite single-crystalline microplate arrays are fabricated on a large scale via inkjet printing technology by Mingzhu Li, Yanlin Song, and co-workers in article number 1603217. By modulating the inkjet droplet volume and the ink composition, a tunable single/multiple mode laser with high quality factors up to 863 and three primary-color microplates are achieved. This work makes a great step toward the multifunction of on-chip perovskite crystals, which can boost its promising applications on integrated coherent light sources and other optoelectronic applications. Recent progress in the development of metallofullerene nanomaterials for next-generation biomedical applications is reviewed. For example, the metallo-fullerenes are promising magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents, which are attractive by shielding toxic metals from the bioenviroment. This nanoplatform readily allows specific targeting and multi-modality capability for both diagnostic and therapeutic applications. reviews Shell-isolated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SHINERS) has been invented to break the long-standing material-and substrate-specific limitations in conventional SERS. The noble metal nanoparticle acts as plasmonic nanoantenna for the near field amplification , and the ultra-thin and inert dielectric shell prevents the interference of environmental species. This SHINERS concept could be applied to a lager family of surface-enhanced spectroscopies. Catalysts Hydrogen is considered as sustainable and environmentally friendly energy for global energy demands in the future. Here a Co-FeS 2 catalyst with surface phosphide doping (P/Co-FeS 2) for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in acidic solutions is developed. The P/Co-FeS 2 exhibits superior HER electrochemical performance with overpotential of-90 mV at 100 mA cm-2 and Tafel slope of 41 mV/decade and excellent durability. communications MWCNTs self-assemble into various homocentric rings in a thermo-driven self-assembly system. Closely packed and scatteredly packed MWCNT rings self-assemble on a Si-SiO 2 substrate, whereas on a Au substrate ...

The biomedical applications of carbon nanomaterials, especially integrating noninvasive photothermal therapy (PTT) and photodynamic therapy (PDT), into a single system have enormous potential in cancer therapy. Herein, we present a novel and facile one-step method for the preparation of water-soluble single-walled carbon nanohorns (SWNHs) and metal phthalocyanines (MPc) hybrid for PTT and PDT. The hydrophilic MPc, tetrasulfonic acid tetrasodium salt copper phthalocyanine (TSCuPc), is coated on the surface of SWNHs via noncovalent π-π interaction using the sonication method. In this PTT/PDT nanosystem, SWNHs acts as a photosensitizer carrier and PTT agent, while TSCuPc acts as a hydrophilic and PDT agent. The EPR results demonstrated that the generated reactive oxygen species (ROS) not only from the photoinduced electron transfer process from TSCuPc to SWNHs but also from SWNHs without exciting TSCuPc to its excited state. The test of photothermal conversion proved that not only do SWNHs contribute to the photothermal therapy (PTT) effect, TSCuPc probably also contributes to that when it coats on the surface of SWNHs upon exposure to a 650-nm laser. More importantly, the results of in vitro cell viability revealed a significantly enhanced anticancer efficacy of combined noninvasive PTT/PDT, indicating that the SWNHs-TSCuPc nanohybrid is a hopeful candidate material for developing an efficient and biocompatible nanoplatform for biomedical application.