Breast cancer is the most common malignant disease in women worldwide, but the current drug therapy is far from optimal as indicated by the high death rate of breast cancer patients. Nanomedicine is a promising alternative for breast cancer treatment. Nanomedicine products such as Doxil
®
and Abraxane
®
have already been extensively used for breast cancer adjuvant therapy with favorable clinical outcomes. However, these products were originally designed for generic anticancer purpose and not specifically for breast cancer treatment. With better understanding of the molecular biology of breast cancer, a number of novel promising nanotherapeutic strategies and devices have been developed in recent years. In this review, we will first give an overview of the current breast cancer treatment and the updated status of nanomedicine use in clinical setting, then discuss the latest important trends in designing breast cancer nanomedicine, including passive and active cancer cell targeting, breast cancer stem cell targeting, tumor microenvironment-based nanotherapy and combination nanotherapy of drug-resistant breast cancer. Researchers may get insight from these strategies to design and develop nanomedicine that is more tailored for breast cancer to achieve further improvements in cancer specificity, antitumorigenic effect, antimetastasis effect and drug resistance reversal effect.
Polyzwitterionic hydrogel is an emerging material for solar‐driven water evaporation in saline environment due to its special anti‐polyelectrolyte effect, which is a promising approach to co‐generation of freshwater and electricity. However, the molecular impact on anti‐polyelectrolyte effect remains unclear, let alone to optimize the zwitterionic structure to promote water evaporation efficiency in high‐salinity brine. Herein, a molecularly engineered zwitterionic hydrogel is developed and the incorporated phenyl‐methylene‐imidazole motif greatly enhances the salt binding ability and strengthens anti‐polyelectrolyte effect, leading to boosted hydration, improved salt tolerance, ultra‐low evaporation enthalpy (almost half of traditional zwitterionic gel), and durable anti‐microbial ability in brine. Besides, gradient solar‐thermal network is penetrated to optimize water transport channel and heat confinement. The gel exhibits excellent evaporation rate of 3.17 kg m−2 h−1 in seawater, which is 1.6 times of that in water and such high efficiency could be maintained during 8 h continuous desalination, demonstrating outstanding salt tolerance. The high flux of ion stream can generate considerable voltage (321.3 mV) simultaneously. This work will bring new insights to the understanding of anti‐polyelectrolyte effect at molecular level and promote materials design for saline water evaporation.
Oral defects lead to a series of function disorders, severely threatening the patients' health. Although injectable hydrogels are widely studied in tissue regeneration, their mechanical performance is usually stationary after implant, without further self-adaption toward the microenvironment. Herein, an injectable hydrogel with programmed mechanical kinetics of instant gelation and gradual self-strengthening along with outstanding biodegradation ability is developed. The fast gelation is realized through rapid Schiff base reaction between biodegradable chitosan and aldehyde-modified sodium hyaluronate, while selfstrengthening is achieved via slow reaction between redundant amino groups on chitosan and epoxy-modified hydroxyapatite. The resultant hydrogel also possesses multiple functions including (1) bio-adhesion, (2) self-healing, (3) bactericidal, (4) hemostasis, and (5) X-ray in situ imaging, which can be effectively used for oral jaw repair. We believe that the strategy illustrated here will provide new insights into dynamic mechanical regulation of injectable hydrogels and promote their application in tissue regeneration.
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