Volume 18 Issue 6, June 2023

Since the early 1990s, the intersection of genetics and nanomedicine has found a home in the clinic as one of the game changers of the past decade, holding great promise in fighting diseases by rapidly developing much-needed therapeutic platforms, from cancer to infectious or genetic diseases. And this revolution was just triggered by the amazing evolving world of messenger RNA and its ‘cues’.

Recent advancements in DNA nanotechnology are enabling the construction of both aesthetically pleasing and functional structures using synthetic DNA strands, paving the way for practical applications in various fields.

Discovery of a novel axis through which multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) elicit toxicity in human macrophages, involving the propagation of inflammatory signalling via the Siglec-14-DAP12-Syk pathway, and how it may be controlled pharmacologically.

A study of the transport of gold nanoparticles in the kidney nephron shows a previously unreported transport pathway.

Drug delivery to the bone marrow has limited efficiency, hitchhiking on bone marrow homing neutrophils offers a solution.

Single blood vessel analysis by artificial intelligence (AI) reveals heterogeneous vascular permeability among different tumour types, which is leveraged in rationally designing protein nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems to achieve active trans-endothelial permeability in tumours.

This Review highlights the role of transition metal dichalcogenides, hexagonal boron nitride and stacked heterostructures in applications in quantum communication, computation, sensing and single-photon detection.

Moiré lattice reconstruction on mesoscopic length scales gives rise to diverse exciton signatures within emergent domains of different dimensionality.

Based on symmetry-breaking perturbations, leaky-wave metasurfaces with pointwise control of the amplitude, phase and polarization of surface emission offer a universal generalization of grating couplers for integrated photonics.

The crystallization of nanoparticles is observed with single-particle resolution via electron microscopy. The growth modes are explained via computer simulations, unifying the understanding of crystallization from the atomic to micrometre scale.

Ionic flow through ångström-scale channels facilitates selectivity beyond steric effects between ions of same charge and hydrated diameter. Here, with two-dimensional channels, the authors show that ion position in the channel influences selectivity.

The authors developed a highly conductive and dielectric composite solid-state electrolyte by coupling BaTiO₃ and Li_0.33La_0.56TiO_3–x nanowires with a side-by-side heterojunction structure in a polyvinylidene difluoride matrix, which simultaneously promotes the dissociation of lithium salts to produce more movable Li ions and efficiently transports the generated movable Li ions.

A simple descriptor called degree-of-isolation is proposed to describe the microenvironment and determine the effectiveness of active sites in single-site alloys. For a single-site alloy with a high degree-of-isolation, alternation of the active centre strongly affects the selectivity.

Approaches to treat inflammatory bowel disease with probiotics or artificial enzymes have advantages and limitations. Here we combine the advantages to overcome the individual limitations by modifying probiotics with artificial enzymes and demonstrate application in treating inflammatory bowel disease.

This study uncovers the role of aromatic clusters in the receptor extracellular loop of sialic-acid-binding immunoglobulin-like lectins that recognize carbon nanotubes and suggests inhibiting Syk signalling as a therapeutic intervention against inflammation.

Understanding the pathways of nanoparticle removal from the body is important for nanomedicine applications and safety. Here the authors report the elimination of gold nanoparticles from the proximal tubules in the kidney via a newly described elimination pathway.

Systemic drug delivery to the bone marrow is limited, currently requiring high doses of drug, increasing the risk of side effects. Here, the authors report on the hitchhiking of drug nanoparticles in neutrophils using their natural homing to the bone marrow for targeted delivery, and demonstrate its application.

Using genetically tailored protein-based nanoprobes and taking advantage of image-segmentation-based machine learning, a high-throughput assessment of vascular permeability of individual blood vessels in 32 different tumours is quantified. These insights are valuable in developing personalized anticancer nanomedicine therapeutics and strategies modulating vascular permeability to treat tumours.

Sonogenetics provides neuron-specific activation at high spatiotemporal resolution ex vivo in retina and in vivo deep in the visual cortex using the AAV gene delivery of a mechanosensitive ion channel and low-intensity ultrasound stimulations.

The authors use a DNA-framework-based molecular classifier to perform biomarker panel screening and analyse six biomarkers across three-dimensional datatypes to obtain a molecular taxonomy for prostate cancer diagnosis.