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Electrospun nanofibers with structural and functional advantages have drawn much attention due to their potential applications for active food packaging. The traditional role of food packaging is just storage containers for food products. The changes of retailing practice and consumer demand promote the development of active packaging to improve the safety, quality, and shelf life of the packaged foods. To develop the technique of electrospinning for active food packaging, electrospun nanofibers have been covalently or non‐covalently functionalized for loading diverse bioactive compounds including antimicrobial agents, antioxidant agents, oxygen scavengers, carbon dioxide emitters, and ethylene scavengers. The aim of this review is to present a concise but comprehensive summary on the progress of electrospinning techniques for active food packaging. Emphasis is placed on the tunability of the electrospinning technique, which achieves the modification of fiber composition, orientation, and architecture. Efforts are also made to provide functionalized strategies of electrospun polymeric nanofibers for food packaging application. Furthermore, the existing limitations and prospects for developing electrospinning in food packaging area are discussed.

A theranostic agent combines diagnostic reporter with therapeutic activity in a single entity, an approach that seeks to increase the efficacy of cancer treatment. Herein, we describe the synthesis of a highly emissive tetraphenylethene-based metallacage using multicomponent coordination-driven self-assembly that exhibits a coordination-triggered aggregation-induced emission (AIE) enhancement. The formation of metallacage-loaded nanoparticles (MNPs) occurs when the assembly is treated with two variants of a 1,2-distearoyl-phosphatidylethanolamine (DSPE)/polyethylene glycol (PEG) conjugate, mPEG-DSPE, and biotin-PEG-DSPE. This combination endows the resultant MNPs with excellent stability and targeting ability, specifically enabling selective delivery of the metallacages to cancer cells that overexpress biotin receptors via receptor-mediated endocytosis. Although the mechanism of activity is based on existing Pt(II) anticancer drugs such as oxaliplatin, carboplatin, and cisplatin, in vitro and in vivo studies indicate that the MNPs are more active and show low systemic activity while also possessing emissive properties that allow for fluorescence-based imaging. This pioneering example of a metallacage that combines biologically active components with AIE imaging establishes supramolecular coordination complexes imbedded within nanoparticles as a promising potential theranostic platform for cancer treatment.ver the past decades, platinum-based coordination complexes have been a mainstay of clinical drugs for the treatment of many solid tumors, including testicular, colorectal, genitourinary, and nonsmall cell lung cancers (1, 2). Cisplatin, oxaliplatin, and carboplatin have been approved as first-line chemotherapeutics for the treatment of carcinoma in combination with other anticancer drugs. However, their chemotherapeutic applications are greatly limited by severe side effects that include acute nephrotoxicity, neurotoxicity, ototoxicity, and emetogenesis (3, 4). The search for low-dose platinum-based drugs/prodrugs with high selectivity to tumor tissues motivates the development of targeting drug delivery systems that may reduce side effects and show an improved therapeutic index. Further modifications are sought to address drawbacks of poor solubility, rapid clearance, and a lack of selectivity (5, 6). Although fluorescence-based techniques provide a means to track the processes of translocation, drug release and excretion of anticancer agents, the aforementioned species are intrinsically nonfluorescent under treatment conditions (7-10).In sharp contrast to the aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect, Tang and colleagues developed a novel class of organic luminogens that are nonemissive in solution but become intensely emissive on aggregation, with pioneering studies based on tetraphenylethene (TPE) and hexaphenylsilole (HPS). This so-called aggregation-induced emission (AIE) effect is attributed to the restriction of intramolecular rotation (RIR) of the aromatic rings of AIEgens (11). Since the discovery of...

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We report here a new approach to creating diversiform copolymer-derived self-assembly morphologies that relies on macrocycle/anion recognition in aqueous media. This approach exploits the anion binding features of a water-soluble form of the so-called ‘Texas-sized’ molecular box. When this tetracationic receptor is added to an aqueous solution of an amphiphilic copolymer bearing tethered carboxylate anion substituents, binding occurs to form a macrocycle/polymer complex. As the concentration of the box-like receptor increases, the relative hydrophilic fraction of the copolymer complex likewise increases. This leads to changes in the overall morphology of the self-assembled ensemble. The net result is an environmentally controllable system that mimics on a proof-of-concept level the structural evolution of organelles seen in living cells. The macrocycle/anion interactions respond in differing degrees to three key biological species, namely ATP, ADP, and AMP, which may be used as “inputs” to induce disassembly of these vehicles. As a result of this triggering and the nature of the morphological changes induced, the present copolymer system is capable of capturing and releasing in controlled manner various test payloads, including hydrophobic and hydrophilic fluorophores. The copolymer displays low inherent cytotoxicity as inferred from cell proliferation assays involving the HUVEC and HepG2 cell lines.

Although previous efforts have focused on altering the size of drug delivery carriers with the goal of improving the efficacy of anticancer therapy, the penetration of nuclear pores still represents a formidable barrier for the existing drug delivery systems. To this end, a cooperative, dimensional strategy is employed that can considerably improve intranuclear drug delivery to augment the overall therapeutic efficacy of therapeutics requiring nuclear entry. This cooperative strategy relies on i) the pH and redox responsiveness of micelles (termed PSPD) to extend blood circulation and increase both the cellular uptake and the redox sensitivity of PSPD to reduce micelles to a size that is more capable of nuclear entry and ii) a dexamethasone-conjugated micelle (termed Dex-P 123 ) to target nuclei and dilate nuclear pores to allow PSPD to freely penetrate the nuclear pores. The resulting hybrid micelles, termed PSPD/Dex-P 123 , are found to deliver doxorubicin into cell nuclei more efficiently, thereby inducing more pronounced cytotoxicity against cancer cells in vitro. Importantly, a much more effective inhibition of tumor growth is observed in tumor-bearing mice, demonstrating the feasibility of this cooperative strategy for in vivo applications. The current study defines a useful dimensional strategy to improve nuclear-targeted and intranuclear drug delivery.

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Metal-free and controlled synthesis of sulfur-containing polymer is still a big challenge in polymer chemistry. Here, we report a metal-free, living copolymerization of carbonyl sulfide (COS) with epoxides via the cooperative catalysis of organic Lewis pairs including bases (e.g.: phosphazene, amidine, and guanidine) and thioureas as hydrogen-bond donors, afford well-defined poly(monothiocarbonate)s with 100% alternating degree, >99% tail-to-head content, controlled molecular weights (up to 98.4 kg/mol), and narrow molecular weight distributions (1.13–1.23). The effect of the types of Lewis pairs on the copolymerization of COS with several epoxides is investigated. The turnover frequencies (TOFs) of these Lewis pairs are as high as 112 h−1 at 25 °C. Kinetic and mechanistic results suggest that the supramolecular specific recognition of thiourea to epoxide and base to COS promote the copolymerization cooperatively. This strategy provides commercially available Lewis pairs for metal-free synthesis of sulfur-containing polymers with precise structure.