Conspectus Molecular medicine is an emerging field focused on understanding the molecular basis of diseases and translating this information into strategies for diagnosis and therapy. This approach could lead to personalized medical treatments. Currently, our ability to understand human diseases at the molecular level is limited by the lack of molecular tools to identify and characterize the distinct molecular features of the disease state, especially for diseases such as cancer. Among the new tools being developed by researchers including chemists, engineers and other scientists is a new class of nucleic acid probes called aptamers, which are ssDNA/RNA molecules selected to target a wide range of molecules and even cells. In this Account, we will focus on the use of aptamers, generated from cell-based selections, as a novel molecular tool for cancer research. Cancers originate from mutations of human genes. These genetic alterations result in molecular changes to diseased cells, which, in turn, lead to changes in cell morphology and physiology. For decades, clinicians have diagnosed cancers primarily based on the morphology of tumor cells or tissues. However, this method does not always give an accurate diagnosis and does not allow clinicians to effectively assess the complex molecular alterations that are predictive of cancer progression. Although genomics and proteomics do not yet allow a full access to this molecular knowledge, aptamer probes represent one effective and practical avenue toward this goal. One special feature of aptamers is that we can isolate them by selection against cancer cells without prior knowledge of the number and arrangement of proteins on the cellular surface. These probes can identify molecular differences between normal and tumor cells and can discriminate among tumor cells of different classifications, at different disease stages, or from different patients. This Account summarizes our recent efforts to develop aptamers through cell-SELEX for the study of cancer and apply those aptamers in cancer diagnosis and therapy. We first discuss how we select aptamers against live cancer cells. We then describe uses of these aptamers. Aptamers can serve as agents for molecular profiling of specific cancer types. They can also be used to modify therapeutic reagents to develop targeted cancer therapies. Aptamers are also aiding the discovery of new cancer biomarkers through the recognition of membrane protein targets. Importantly, we demonstrate how molecular assemblies can integrate the properties of aptamers and, for example, nanoparticles or microfluidic devices, to improve cancer cell enrichment, detection and therapy.

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Molecular beacons (MBs) are specifically designed DNA hairpin structures that are widely used as fluorescent probes. Applications of MBs range from genetic screening, biosensor development, biochip construction, and the detection of single-nucleotide polymorphisms to mRNA monitoring in living cells. The inherent signal-transduction mechanism of MBs enables the analysis of target oligonucleotides without the separation of unbound probes. The MB stem-loop structure holds the fluorescence-donor and fluorescence-acceptor moieties in close proximity to one another, which results in resonant energy transfer. A spontaneous conformation change occurs upon hybridization to separate the two moieties and restore the fluorescence of the donor. Recent research has focused on the improvement of probe composition, intracellular gene quantitation, protein-DNA interaction studies, and protein recognition.

We have investigated the capability of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) to penetrate the cell wall and cell membrane of intact plant cells. Confocal fluorescence images revealed the cellular uptake of both SWNT/fluorescein isothiocyanate and SWNT/DNA conjugates, demonstrating that SWNTs also hold great promise as nanotransporters for walled plant cells. Moreover, the result suggested that SWNTs could deliver different cargoes into different plant cell organelles.

[Gd@C82(OH)22]n particles (22 nm in a saline solution) of a dose level as low as 10(-7) mol/kg exhibit a very high antineoplastic efficiency ( approximately 60%) in mice. A dose increment of 1 x 10(-7) mol/kg increases the tumor inhibition rate 26%. [Gd@C82(OH)22]n particles have a strong capacity to improve immunity and interfere with tumor invasion in normal muscle cells, nearly without toxicity in vivo and in vitro. Unlike conventional antineoplastic chemicals, the high antitumor efficiency of nanoparticles is not due to toxic effects to cells because they do not kill the tumor cells directly and only about 0.05% of the used dose is found in the tumor tissues. Results suggest that fullerene derivatives with proper surface modifications and sizes may help realize the dream of tumor chemotherapeutics of high-efficacy and low-toxicity.

PIP2;1 is an integral membrane protein that facilitates water transport across plasma membranes. To address the dynamics of Arabidopsis thaliana PIP2;1 at the single-molecule level as well as their role in PIP2;1 regulation, we tracked green fluorescent protein-PIP2;1 molecules by variable-angle evanescent wave microscopy and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS). Single-particle tracking analysis revealed that PIP2;1 presented four diffusion modes with large dispersion of diffusion coefficients, suggesting that partitioning and dynamics of PIP2;1 are heterogeneous and, more importantly, that PIP2;1 can move into or out of membrane microdomains. In response to salt stress, the diffusion coefficients and percentage of restricted diffusion increased, implying that PIP2;1 internalization was enhanced. This was further supported by the decrease in PIP2;1 density on plasma membranes by FCS. We additionally demonstrated that PIP2;1 internalization involves a combination of two pathways: a tyrphostin A23-sensitive clathrin-dependent pathway and a methyl-b-cyclodextrin-sensitive, membrane raft-associated pathway. The latter was efficiently stimulated under NaCl conditions. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that PIP2;1 molecules are heterogeneously distributed on the plasma membrane and that clathrin and membrane raft pathways cooperate to mediate the subcellular trafficking of PIP2;1, suggesting that the dynamic partitioning and recycling pathways might be involved in the multiple modes of regulating water permeability.

A platform for capture and release of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is demonstrated by utilizing aptamer grafted silicon nanowires. Here, single‐stranded DNA‐aptamers are generated via the Cell‐SELEX process to serve as capture agents, allowing specific capture and release of non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) CTCs from whole‐blood samples with minimum contamination and negligible disruption to CTC viability and functions.

Despite the recent surge of interest in inorganic lead halide perovskite nanocrystals, there are still significant gaps in their stability disturbance and the understanding of their destabilization, assembly, and growth processes. Here, we discover that polar solvent molecules can induce the lattice distortion of ligand-stabilized cubic CsPbI, leading to the phase transition into orthorhombic phase, which is unfavorable for photovoltaic applications. Such lattice distortion triggers the dipole moment on CsPbI nanocubes, which subsequently initiates the hierarchical self-assembly of CsPbI nanocubes into single-crystalline nanowires. The systematic investigations and in situ monitoring on the kinetics of the self-assembly process disclose that the more amount or the stronger polarity of solvent can induce the more rapid self-assembly and phase transition. These results not only elucidate the destabilization mechanism of cubic CsPbI nanocrystals, but also open up opportunities to synthesize and store cubic CsPbI for their practical applications in photovoltaics and optoelectronics.