Inflammatory cells have gained widespread attention because inflammatory diseases increase the risk for many types of cancer. Therefore, it is urgent and important to implement detection and treatment methods for inflammatory cells. Herein, we constructed a theranostic probe with aggregation‐induced emission (AIE) characteristics, in which tetraphenylethene (TPE) was modified with two tyrosine (Tyr) moieties. Owing to the H2O2‐dependent, enzyme‐catalyzed dityrosine formation, Tyr‐containing TPE (TT) molecules crosslink through dityrosine linkages to induce the formation of hydrophobic aggregates, activating the AIE process in inflammatory cells that contain H2O2 and overexpress myeloperoxidase. The emission turn‐on resulting from the crosslinking of TT molecules could be used to distinguish between inflammatory and normal cells. Moreover, the massive TT aggregates induced mitochondria damage and cell apoptosis. This study demonstrates that the H2O2‐responsive peroxidase‐activated AIEgen holds great promise for inflammatory‐cell selective imaging and inhibition.

The transmission of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has led to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nucleic acid testing while specific has limitations for mass surveillance. One alternative is the main protease (M pro ) due to its functional importance in mediating the viral life cycle. Here, we describe a combination of modular substrate and gold colloids to detect M pro via visual readout. The strategy involves zwitterionic peptide that carries opposite charges at the C-/N-terminus to exploit the specific recognition by M pro . Autolytic cleavage releases a positively charged moiety that assembles the nanoparticles with rapid color changes (t < 10 min). We determine a limit of detection for M pro in breath condensate matrices < 10 nM. We further assayed ten COVID-negative subjects and found no false-positive result. In the light of simplicity, our test for viral protease is not limited to an equipped laboratory, but also is amenable to integrating as portable point-of-care devices including those on face-coverings.

We design and experimentally demonstrate an ultrathin, ultrabroadband, and highly efficient reflective linear polarization convertor or half-wave retarder operating at terahertz frequencies. The metamaterial-inspired convertor is composed of metallic disks and split-ring resonators placed over a ground plane. The structure exhibits three neighboring resonances, by which the linear polarization of incident waves can be converted to its orthogonal counterpart upon reflection. For an optimal design, a measured polarization conversion ratio for normal incidence is greater than 80% in the range of 0.65-1.45 THz, equivalent to 76% relative bandwidth. The mechanism for polarization conversion is explained via decomposed electric field components that couple with different resonance modes of the structure. The proposed metamaterial design for enhancing efficiency of polarization conversion has potential applications in the area of terahertz spectroscopy, imaging, and communications. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.Terahertz science and technology have seen rapid development, underpinned by many promising applications in imaging, sensing, and communications. 1 Towards these applications, high-performance terahertz components become essential for manipulating terahertz waves. One important group of components is related to polarization manipulation, including polarizers, wave retarders, and polarization rotators. In particular, conventional wave retarders can be achieved by using waveplates made of natural birefringent materials with a retardation effect. 2,3 Those wave plates require a relatively long propagation distance to obtain sufficient phase accumulation, despite the limited operation bandwidth and availability. Thus, more convenient and flexible approaches are desirable to fully manipulate the polarization state of electromagnetic waves.Over the past decade, metamaterials as artificial composite materials have attracted great attention due to their exotic electromagnetic properties unavailable to natural materials. 4 Such unique properties open up significant opportunities, including an alternative approach to manipulating the polarization of electromagnetic waves. 5-9 Several high-efficiency wave retarders have been demonstrated through different metamaterial microstructure designs, and these polarization wave retarders were demonstrated for conversion between different polarization states, such as linear to linear, 10-14 linear to circular, 15,16 and circular to circular polarization. 17 Compared with the traditional wave plates, these metamaterial-based wave retarders have advantages including subwavelength thickness, high conversion efficiency, angular tolerance, and scalability. In most of the existing wave retarders, the polarization states are manipulated in the transmission mode with a limited number of designs operating in the reflection mode. 11,12,15,18 For most retarders in the reflection mode, the undesirable high co-polarization reflection severely limits the polarization conversion efficienc...

Gene therapyhas immense potential as atherapeutic approach to serious diseases.H owever,e fficient delivery and real-time tracking of gene therapeutic agents have not been solved well for successful gene-based therapeutics.H erein we present av ersatile gene-delivery strategy for efficient and visualizedd elivery of therapeutic genes into the targeted nucleus.W ed eveloped an integrin-targeted, cell-permeable, and nucleocytoplasmic trafficking peptide-conjugated AIEgen named T D NCP for the efficient and sequential targeted delivery of an antisense single-stranded DNAo ligonucleotide (ASO) and tracking of the delivery process into the nucleus.A s compared with T D NCP/siRNA-NPs (siRNAfunctions mainly in the cytoplasm), T D NCP/ASO-NPs (ASO functions mainly in the nucleus) exhibited ab etter interference effect, which further indicates that T D NCP is an ucleus-targeting vector. Moreover,T D NCP/ASO-NPs showed af avorable tumorsuppressive effect in vivo.

A broadband metamaterial absorber (MA) based on lumped elements is presented, which is composed of the dielectric substrate sandwiched with metal split-coin resonators (SCR) welded with lumped elements and continuous metal film. We simulated, fabricated, and measured the lumped elements MA. Compared with the single SCR structure MA, the composite MA loaded with lumped elements has a wider absorptivity and works in a lower frequency. The experiment results show that the bandwidth of absorption of 90% is about 1.5 GHz and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) can be up to 50%, the absorptivity is also nearly unchanged for different polarizations. The further simulations of the absorptivity of composite MA with different lumped resistances and capacitances indicate that there exist optimal values for lumped resistances and capacitances, where the absorptivity is the highest and the bandwidth is the widest.

Precisely targeted transportation of a long-term tracing regent to a nucleus with low toxicity is one of the most challenging concerns in revealing cancer cell behaviors.

Controlled drug delivery and real-time tracking of drug release in cancer cells are essential for cancer therapy. Herein, we report a protease-responsive prodrug (DOX-FCPPs-PyTPE, DFP) with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics for controlled drug delivery and precise tracking of drug release in living cells. DFP consists of three components: AIE-active tetraphenylethene (TPE) derivative PyTPE, functionalized cell penetrating peptides (FCPPs) containing a cell penetrating peptide (CPP) and a short protease-responsive peptide (LGLAG) that can be selectively cleaved by a cancer-related enzyme matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), and a therapeutic unit (doxorubicin, DOX). Without MMP-2, this prodrug cannot go inside the cells easily. In the presence of MMP-2, DFP can be cleaved into two parts. One is cell penetrating peptides (CPPs) linked DOX, which can easily interact with cell membrane and then go inside the cell with the help of CPPs. Another is the PyTPE modified peptide which will self-aggregate because of the hydrophobic interaction and turn on the yellow fluorescence of PyTPE. The appearance of the yellow fluorescence indicates the release of the therapeutic unit to the cells. The selective delivery of the drug to the MMP-2 positive cells was also confirmed by using the intrinsic red fluorescence of DOX. Our result suggests a new and promising method for controlled drug delivery and real-time tracking of drug release in MMP-2 overexpression cells.

in high-resolution terahertz imaging and detection for security and biomedicine.By defi nition, perfect absorbers can absorb EM waves with near-unity absorbance, which are promising for applications in terahertz imaging and detection via enhanced contrast and sensitivity. Metamaterials are candidates for creating perfect absorbers owing to the possibility of tailoring the response of the structure with great fl exibility. [ 5,6 ] Landy et al. [ 7 ] fi rst demonstrated the perfect metamaterial absorber concept in the microwave range, and since then great interest in EM absorbers has extended toward optical frequencies in recent years. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Metamaterial absorbers typically consist of two coupled metallic layers separated by a dielectric spacer to create electric and magnetic responses for impedance matching with free space. [ 23 ] The electric response can be obtained from excitation of the top metal layer readily coupled to an external electric fi eld, while the magnetic response is provided by pairing the top layer with a metal ground plane or metal wire for an external magnetic fi eld. In the microwave and terahertz regions, these metamaterial absorbers obtain high absorption through dielectric loss and impedance matching at resonance. [ 23 ] The absorption frequency range and amplitude can be tuned by adjusting the shape, size, thickness, and properties of the metallic structure and dielectric spacer. Due to the nature of resonance response, these metamaterial absorbers usually exhibit narrowband absorption that has advantages in applications such as fi ltering, sensing, and modulation. [ 24 ] Broadband perfect absorbers are desirable for other applications such as high-effi ciency signal detection and communications. This has necessitated signifi cant research effort toward extending the absorption bandwidth. A straightforward approach is to cluster multiple resonating structures with different sizes in each unit cell to create a number of absorption bands. [ 9,22 ] Graphene has been introduced to construct broadband terahertz absorbers due to its exceptional properties, such as optical transparency, fl exibility, and tunability. [25][26][27] However, the structure is demanding in terms of cost and complexity. Another alternative promising material for terahertz absorption is a moderately doped semiconductor, which can be readily fabricated using conventional micro-fabrication techniques. At terahertz frequencies, doped semiconductors have desirable conductive loss, enabling them to sustain surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and correspondingly localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) via periodic structures. [28][29][30] Recently, we have demonstrated that doped silicon can be engineered to attain highly Perfect absorbers that exhibit broadband absorption of terahertz radiation are promising for applications in imaging and detection due to enhanced contrast and sensitivity in this relatively untapped frequency regime. Here, terahertz plasmonics is used ...