Acute lung injury (ALI) is characterized by severe inflammation and damage to the lung air–blood barrier, resulting in respiratory function damage and life‐threatening outcomes. Macrophage polarization plays an essential role in the occurrence, development, and outcome of ALI. As drug carriers, self‐assembled DNA nanostructures can potentially overcome the drawbacks and limitations of traditional anti‐inflammatory agents owing to their nontoxicity, programmability, and excellent structural control at the nanoscale. A small interfering RNA (siRNA) and drug dual therapy nanoplatform are proposed and constructed here to combat ALI. The nanoplatform consists of a spermidine‐assembled DNA tetrahedron and four mammalian target of rapamycin siRNAs. Spermidine serves as a mediator of drug delivery vehicle synthesis and a drug that alters macrophage polarization. Both spermidine and siRNA exert anti‐inflammatory effects in vitro and in vivo by regulating the macrophage phenotype. More importantly, these factors exhibit a synergistic anti‐inflammatory effect by promoting macrophage autophagy. For the first time, an anti‐inflammatory dual therapy strategy that uses self‐assembled DNA nanostructures as nontoxic, programmable delivery vehicles is proposed and demonstrated through this work. Future work on utilizing DNA nanostructures for the treatment of noncancerous diseases such as ALI is highly promising and desirable.
Target double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) or single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) can activate the trans-cleavage activity of the CRISPR/Cas12a, cutting the surrounding non-target ssDNA arbitrarily. In typical CRISPR/Cas12a system, this non-target ssDNA with...
Anti‐Inflammatory Therapy
In article number 2200008 by Mingdong Hu, Hang Qian, and co‐workers, a dual therapy DNA nanoplatform consisting of spermidine and mTOR siRNA is constructed and a synergistic anti‐inflammatory effect is demonstrated in vitro and in an acute lung injury mouse model.
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