Responsive hyaluronic acid-gold cluster hybrid nanogel theranostic systems

Application progress of nanomaterials in the treatment of prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in men, which seriously threatens the survival and quality of life of patients. At present, there are serious limitations in the treatment of prostate cancer, such as drug tolerance, drug resistance and easy recurrence. Sonodynamic therapy and chemodynamic therapy are two emerging tumor treatment methods, which activate specific drugs or sonosensitizers through sound waves or chemicals to produce reactive oxygen species and kill tumor cells. Nanomaterials are a kind of nanoscale materials with many excellent physical properties such as high targeting, drug release regulation and therapeutic monitoring. Sonodynamic therapy and chemodynamic therapy combined with the application of nanomaterials can improve the therapeutic effect of prostate cancer, reduce side effects and enhance tumor immune response. This article reviews the application progress of nanomaterials in the treatment of prostate cancer, especially the mechanism, advantages and challenges of nanomaterials in sonodynamic therapy and chemodynamic therapy, which provides new ideas and prospects for research in this field.

Targeting inflammation with hyaluronic acid-based micro- and nanotechnology: A disease-oriented review

Inflammation is a pivotal immune response in numerous diseases and presents therapeutic challenges. Traditional anti-inflammatory drugs and emerging cytokine inhibitors encounter obstacles such as limited bioavailability, poor tissue distribution, and adverse effects. Hyaluronic acid (HA), a versatile biopolymer, is widely employed to deliver therapeutic agents, including anti-inflammatory drugs, genes, and cell therapies owing to its unique properties, such as hydrophilicity, biodegradability, and safety. HA interacts with cell receptors to initiate processes such as angiogenesis, cell proliferation, and immune regulation. HA-based drug delivery systems offer dual strategies for effective inflammation management, capitalizing on passive and active mechanisms. This synergy permits the mitigation of inflammation by lowering the doses of anti-inflammatory drugs and their off-target adverse effects. A diverse array of micro- and nanotechnology techniques enable the fabrication of tailored HA-engineered systems, including hydrogels, microgels, nanogels, microneedles, nanofibers, and 3D-printed scaffolds, for diverse formulations and administration routes. This review explores recent insights into HA pharmacology in inflammatory conditions, material design, and fabrication methods, as well as its applications across a spectrum of inflammatory diseases, such as atherosclerosis, psoriasis, dermatitis, wound healing, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and colitis, highlighting its potential for clinical translation.

Biodegradable Natural Hydrogels for Tissue Engineering, Controlled Release, and Soil Remediation

This article provides insights into hydrogels of the most promising biodegradable natural polymers and their mechanisms of degradation, highlighting the different possibilities of controlling hydrogel degradation rates. Since biodegradable hydrogels can be designed as scaffolding materials to mimic the physical and biochemical properties of natural tissues, these hydrogels have found widespread application in the field of tissue engineering and controlled release. In the same manner, their potential as water reservoirs, macro- and microelement carriers, or matrixes for the selective adsorption of pollutants make them excellent candidates for sustainable soil amendment solutions. Accordingly, this article summarizes the recent advances in natural biodegradable hydrogels in the fields of tissue engineering, controlled release, and soil remediation, emphasizing the new opportunities that degradability and its tunability offer for the design and applicability of hydrogels.

Theranostic nanogels: multifunctional agents for simultaneous therapeutic delivery and diagnostic imaging

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in multifunctional theranostic agents capable of delivering therapeutic payloads while facilitating simultaneous diagnostic imaging of diseased sites. This approach offers a comprehensive strategy particularly valuable in dynamically evolving diseases like cancer, where combining therapy and diagnostics provides crucial insights for treatment planning. Nanoscale platforms, specifically nanogels, have emerged as promising candidates due to their stability, tunability, and multifunctionality as carriers. As a well-studied subgroup of soft polymeric nanoparticles, nanogels exhibit inherent advantages due to their size and chemical compositions, allowing for passive and active targeting of diseased tissues. Moreover, nanogels loaded with therapeutic and diagnostic agents can be designed to respond to specific stimuli at the disease site, enhancing their efficacy and specificity. This capability enables fine-tuning of theranostic platforms, garnering significant clinical interest as they can be tailored for personalized treatments. The ability to monitor tumor progression in response to treatment facilitates the adaptation of therapies according to individual patient responses, highlighting the importance of designing theranostic platforms to guide clinicians in making informed treatment decisions. Consequently, the integration of therapy and diagnostics using theranostic platforms continues to advance, offering intelligent solutions to address the challenges of complex diseases such as cancer. In this context, nanogels capable of delivering therapeutic payloads and simultaneously armed with diagnostic modalities have emerged as an attractive theranostic platform. This review focuses on advances made toward the fabrication and utilization of theranostic nanogels by highlighting examples from recent literature where their performances through a combination of therapeutic agents and imaging methods have been evaluated.

Advances in Ferroptosis-Inducing Agents by Targeted Delivery System in Cancer Therapy

Currently, cancer remains one of the most significant threats to human health. Treatment of most cancers remains challenging, despite the implementation of diverse therapies in clinical practice. In recent years, research on the mechanism of ferroptosis has presented novel perspectives for cancer treatment. Ferroptosis is a regulated cell death process caused by lipid peroxidation of membrane unsaturated fatty acids catalyzed by iron ions. The rapid development of bio-nanotechnology has generated considerable interest in exploiting iron-induced cell death as a new therapeutic target against cancer. This article provides a comprehensive overview of recent advancements at the intersection of iron-induced cell death and bionanotechnology. In this respect, the mechanism of iron-induced cell death and its relation to cancer are summarized. Furthermore, the feasibility of a nano-drug delivery system based on iron-induced cell death for cancer treatment is introduced and analyzed. Secondly, strategies for inducing iron-induced cell death using nanodrug delivery technology are discussed, including promoting Fenton reactions, inhibiting glutathione peroxidase 4, reducing low glutathione levels, and inhibiting system Xc-. Additionally, the article explores the potential of combined treatment strategies involving iron-induced cell death and bionanotechnology. Finally, the application prospects and challenges of iron-induced nanoagents for cancer treatment are discussed.

Recent advances in stimuli-responsive tailored nanogels for cancer therapy; from bench to personalized treatment

To improve the quality of health in a personalized manner, better control over pharmacologically relevant cargo formulation, organ-specific targeted delivery, and on-demand release of therapeutic agents is crucial. Significant work has been put into designing and developing revolutionary nanotherapeutics approaches for the effective monitoring and personalized treatment of disease. Nanogel (NG) has attracted significant interest because of its tremendous potential in cancer therapy and its environmental stimuli responsiveness. NG is considered a next-generation delivery technology due to its benefits like as size tunability, high loading, stimuli responsiveness, prolonged drug release via in situ gelling mechanisms, stability, and its potential to provide personalized therapy from the investigation of human genes and the genes in various types of cancers and its association with a selective anticancer drug. Stimuli-responsive NGs can be used as smart nanomedicines to detect and treat cancer and can be tuned as personalized medicine as well. This comprehensive review article's major objectives include the challenges of NGs' clinical translation for cancer treatment as well as its early preclinical successes and prospects.

Exploring the Potential of Nanogels: From Drug Carriers to Radiopharmaceutical Agents

Nanogels open up access to a wide range of applications and offer among others hopeful approaches for use in the field of biomedicine. This review provides a brief overview of current developments of nanogels in general, particularly in the fields of drug delivery, therapeutic applications, tissue engineering, and sensor systems. Specifically, cyclodextrin (CD)-based nanogels are important because they have exceptional complexation properties and are highly biocompatible. Nanogels as a whole and CD-based nanogels in particular can be customized in a wide range of sizes and equipped with a desired surface charge as well as containing additional molecules inside and outside, such as dyes, solubility-mediating groups or even biological vector molecules for pharmaceutical targeting. Currently, biological investigations are mainly carried out in vitro, but more and more in vivo applications are gaining importance. Modern molecular imaging methods are increasingly being used for the latter. Due to an extremely high sensitivity and the possibility of obtaining quantitative data on pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties, nuclear methods such as single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) using radiolabeled compounds are particularly suitable here. The use of radiolabeled nanogels for imaging, but also for therapy, is being discussed.

Tailoring Hyaluronic Acid Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is an attractive anionic polysaccharide polymer with inherent pharmacological properties and versatile chemical groups for modification. Due to their water retention ability, biocompatibility, biodegradation, cluster of differentiation‐44 targeting, and highly designable capacity, HA hydrogels have been an emerging biomaterial, showing tailoring performance in terms of chemical modifications and hydrogel forms. Various preparation technologies have been developed for the fabrication of the tailoring HA hydrogels with unique structures and functions. They have been utilized in diverse biomedical applications like drug delivery and tissue engineering scaffolds. Herein, this review comprehensively summarizes the HA derivatives with different molecule weights and functional modifications. Then the various fabrication methods to obtain tailoring hydrogels in the forms of nanogel, nanofiber, microparticle, microneedle patch, injectable hydrogel, and scaffold are reviewed as well. The emphasis is focused on the shining biomedical applications of these tailoring HA hydrogels in anti‐bacteria, anti‐inflammation, wound healing, cancer treatment, regenerative medicine, psoriasis treatment, diagnosis, etc. The potentials and prospects are subsequently given to inspire further investigation, aiming at accelerating product translation from research to clinic.

Intra-articular delivery of geraniol encapsulated by pH/redox-responsive nanogel ameliorates osteoarthritis by regulating oxidative stress and inflammation

Osteoarthritis (OA) remains a challenging condition due to limited drug bioavailability within the avascular and dense cartilage matrix. This study introduces a pH/redox-responsive nanogel for enhanced delivery of geraniol in OA therapy. We investigated geraniol's role in preventing chondrocyte matrix degradation and designed a pH/redox-responsive nanogel as a delivery platform. Our methods included Western blot, histological staining, and immunohistochemistry. Geraniol treatment reduced Keap1 expression while elevating Nrf2 and HO-1 levels, effectively inhibiting cartilage matrix degradation. The pH/redox-responsive nanogel further enhanced geraniol's therapeutic impact. Our study demonstrates that geraniol encapsulated within a pH/redox-responsive nanogel mitigates OA by regulating oxidative stress and inflammation. This innovative approach holds potential as an effective OA therapeutic strategy.

Hyaluronic Acid Nanogels: A Promising Platform for Therapeutic and Theranostic Applications

Hyaluronic acid (HA) nanogels are a versatile class of nanomaterials with specific properties, such as biocompatibility, hygroscopicity, and biodegradability. HA nanogels exhibit excellent colloidal stability and high encapsulation capacity, making them promising tools for a wide range of biomedical applications. HA nanogels can be fabricated using various methods, including polyelectrolyte complexation, self-assembly, and chemical crosslinking. The fabrication parameters can be tailored to control the physicochemical properties of HA nanogels, such as size, shape, surface charge, and porosity, enabling the rational design of HA nanogels for specific applications. Stimulus-responsive nanogels are a type of HA nanogels that can respond to external stimuli, such as pH, temperature, enzyme, and redox potential. This property allows the controlled release of encapsulated therapeutic agents in response to specific physiological conditions. HA nanogels can be engineered to encapsulate a variety of therapeutic agents, such as conventional drugs, genes, and proteins. They can then be delivered to target tissues with high efficiency. HA nanogels are still under development, but they have the potential to become powerful tools for a wide range of theranostic or solely therapeutic applications, including anticancer therapy, gene therapy, drug delivery, and bioimaging.

Recent Advances in the Biomedical Applications of Functionalized Nanogels

Nanomaterials have been extensively used in several applications in the past few decades related to biomedicine and healthcare. Among them, nanogels (NGs) have emerged as an important nanoplatform with the properties of both hydrogels and nanoparticles for the controlled/sustained delivery of chemo drugs, nucleic acids, or other bioactive molecules for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes. In the recent past, significant research efforts have been invested in synthesizing NGs through various synthetic methodologies such as free radical polymerization, reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer method (RAFT) and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), as well as emulsion techniques. With further polymeric functionalizations using activated esters, thiol-ene/yne processes, imines/oximes formation, cycloadditions, nucleophilic addition reactions of isocyanates, ring-opening, and multicomponent reactions were used to obtain functionalized NGs for targeted delivery of drug and other compounds. NGs are particularly intriguing for use in the areas of diagnosis, analytics, and biomedicine due to their nanodimensionality, material characteristics, physiological stability, tunable multi-functionality, and biocompatibility. Numerous NGs with a wide range of functionalities and various external/internal stimuli-responsive modalities have been possible with novel synthetic reliable methodologies. Such continuous development of innovative, intelligent materials with novel characteristics is crucial for nanomedicine for next-generation biomedical applications. This paper reviews the synthesis and various functionalization strategies of NGs with a focus on the recent advances in different biomedical applications of these surface modified/functionalized single-/dual-/multi-responsive NGs, with various active targeting moieties, in the fields of cancer theranostics, immunotherapy, antimicrobial/antiviral, antigen presentation for the vaccine, sensing, wound healing, thrombolysis, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.

One stone, many birds: Recent advances in functional nanogels for cancer nanotheranostics

Inspired by the development of nanomedicine and nanotechnology, more and more possibilities in cancer theranostic have been provided in the last few years. Emerging therapeutic modalities like starvation therapy, chemodynamic therapy, and tumor oxygenation have been integrated with diagnosis, giving a plethora of theranostic nanoagents. Among all of them, nanogels (NGs) show superiority benefiting from their unique attributes: high stability, high water-absorption, large specific surface area, mechanical strength, controlled responsiveness, and high encapsulation capacity. There have been a vast number of investigations supporting various NGs combining drug delivery and multiple bioimaging techniques, encompassing photothermal imaging, photoacoustic imaging, fluorescent imaging, ultrasound imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, and computed tomography. This review summarizes recent advances in functional NGs for theranostic nanomedicine and discusses the challenges and future perspectives of this fast-growing field. This article is categorized under: Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Emerging Technologies Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Nanomedicine for Oncologic Disease Nanotechnology Approaches to Biology > Nanoscale Systems in Biology Diagnostic Tools > In Vivo Nanodiagnostics and Imaging.

Elaborate design of shell component for manipulating the sustained release behavior from core–shell nanofibres

Background

The diversified combination of nanostructure and material has received considerable attention from researchers to exploit advanced functional materials. In drug delivery systems, the hydrophilicity and sustained–release drug properties are in opposition. Thus, difficulties remain in the simultaneous improve sustained–release drug properties and increase the hydrophilicity of materials.

Methods

In this work, we proposed a modified triaxial electrospinning strategy to fabricate functional core–shell fibres, which could elaborate design of shell component for manipulating the sustained-release drug. Cellulose acetate (CA) was designed as the main polymeric matrix, whereas polyethylene glycol (PEG) was added as a hydrophilic material in the middle layer. Cur, as a model drug, was stored in the inner layer.

Results

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) demonstrated that the cylindrical F2–F4 fibres had a clear core–shell structure. The model drug Cur in fibres was verified in an amorphous form during the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, and Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results indicated good compatibility with the CA matrix. The water contact angle test showed that functional F2–F4 fibres had a high hydrophilic property in 120 s and the control sample F1 needed over 0.5 h to obtain hydrophilic property. In the initial stage of moisture intrusion into fibres, the quickly dissolved PEG component guided the water molecules and rapidly eroded the internal structure of functional fibres. The good hydrophilicity of F2–F4 fibres brought relatively excellent swelling rate around 4600%. Blank outer layer of functional F2 fibres with 1% PEG created an exciting opportunity for providing a 96 h sustained-release drug profile, while F3 and F4 fibres with over 3% PEG provided a 12 h modified drug release profile to eliminate tailing–off effect.

Conclusion

Here, the functional F2–F4 fibres had been successfully produced by using the advanced modified triaxial electrospinning nanotechnology with different polymer matrices. The simple strategy in this work has remarkable potential to manipulate hydrophilicity and sustained release of drug carriers, meantime it can also enrich the preparation approaches of functional nanomaterials.

Graphical Abstract

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12951-022-01463-0.

Current Advances of Polysaccharide-Based Nanogels and Microgels in Food and Biomedical Sciences

Polysaccharides are natural polymers with hydrophilic, biocompatible and biodegradable characteristics and have many opportunities in the food and pharmaceutical sectors. This review focuses on the field of nano and microstructures whose internal structure is based on networked polysaccharide chains in 3D i.e., polysaccharide nanogels (NGs) and microgels (MGs). As it is observed the number of articles on NGs and MGs in peer reviewed scientific journals has been increasing over the last two decades. At the same time, the relative contribution of polysaccharides in this field is gaining place. This review focuses on the different applied methods for the fabrication of a variety of polysaccharide-based NGs and MGs and aims to highlight the recent advances on the subject and present their potentials and properties with regards to their integration in aspects of medicinal and food sciences. The presentation of the recent advances in the application of polysaccharide NGs and MGs is divided in materials with potential as emulsion stabilizers and materials with potential as carriers of bioactives. For applications in the medical sector the division is based on the fabrication processes and includes self-assembled, electrostatically complexed/ionically crosslinked and chemically crosslinked NGs and MGs. It is concluded that many advances are expected in the application of these polysaccharide-based materials and in particular as nutrient-loaded emulsion stabilizers, viscosity modifiers and co-assembled structures in combination with proteins.

Supramolecular Assembly and Reversible Transition and of Chitosan Fluorescent Micelles by Noncovalent Modulation

Chitosan-based intelligent artificial systems have been of increasing interest for their biocompatibility, multifunctionality, biological activity, and low cost. Herein, we report the fabrication of supramolecular nanoparticles based on water-soluble chitosan (WCS) and 1,1 ${}^{\prime }$ ,1 ${}^{″}$ ,1 ${}^{″\prime }$ -(ethene-1,1,2,2-tetrayl)tetrakis(benzene-4,1-diyl) tetrakis(azanediyl)tetraacetic acid (TPE-(N-COOH)4), which is capable of reversible transition between polyion complexes (PICs) and hydrogen bonding complexes (HBCs) with tunable aggregation-induced emission driven by pH value. The PIC micelles could be formed via electrostatic interaction between ammonium cations and carboxylate anions under mild alkaline conditions. The formation of the micelles dramatically blocks the nonradiative pathway and enhances the fluorescence of TPE moieties, and the maximum fluorescence intensity was achieved near the isoelectric point due to the restriction of intramolecular motion. In addition, the fluorescence intensity and size of the PIC micelles exhibited a temperature response in the range from 20 to 80°C. Upon adjusting the solution pH to 2, the PIC micelles were reconstructed into hydrogen-bonding complexes while the hydrogen bonding interaction between the protonated carboxyl groups of TPE-(N-COOH)4 and chitosan. Moreover, the size of the micelles underwent a remarkable decrease, whereas the fluorescence emission was further enhanced by ~6.25-fold. The pH actuated micellar transition from PIC to HBC with tunable fluorescence performance is fully reversible. This study provides novel multifunctional materials that are of great importance for their potential application in the fields of optoelectronic devices and chemical and biomedical sensors.