Autoregenerative redox nanoparticles as an antioxidant and glycation inhibitor for palliation of diabetic cataracts.

Diabetic cataracts (DCs) are one of the most common ocular complications of diabetes, and easily causes blindness among diabetics. However, there are limited drugs to delay and prevent DCs. Research studies indicate that oxidative damage of the crystalline lens and nonenzymatic glycosylation of the lens protein play a key role in the pathogenesis of DCs. Hence, we developed a kind of autoregenerative redox nanoparticle, which was CeO2 NPs coated with PEG-PLGA (PCNPs). We first found that PCNPs could work not only as an antioxidant to protect lens epithelial cells from oxidative stress based on the repetitive elimination of reactive oxygen species (ROS), but also as a glycation inhibitor effectively restraining α-crystallin glycation and crosslinking, thereby keeping the lens transparent and alleviating DCs. Experimental results successfully validated the fact that the PCNPs were able to operate in eyes for a long time to attenuate lens opacity. We expect that this strategy will provide promising potential for the treatment of DCs.

Functional nanocarrier for drug and gene delivery via local administration in mucosal tissues.

Local administration has many advantages for treating diseases. However, the surface mucus layer becomes a major obstacle that easily traps and fast removes local administrated drugs and genes in mucosal tissues. Fortunately, the rapidly developing nanocarriers with special physical and chemical properties may help to refine the treatment of mucosal tissues via delivering drugs and genes to the target tissue, and prolong the drug action time. Therefore, this review focuses on the strategies to apply different nanocarriers for drug-delivery in mucosal tissues, including mucoadhesive and mucus-penetrating types. Delivering drugs and genes to anatomical sites with high mucus turnover becomes more feasible and effective, and maintains sufficient local drug concentration to improve treatment efficacy.

The construction of a novel nucleic acids detection microplatform based on the NSET for one-step detecting TK1-DNA and microRNA-21.

Microbeads-based microchip technology has become the potential for a new generation of nucleic acids detection in a high-throughput and sensitive manner. However the specificity and operational complexity limit the microchip applied in nucleic acids detection. Herein, in this work, we designed a kind of gold-nanoparticles coated polystyrene microbeads as microplatform conjugating with the molecular beacons as probes. Due to the nanoparticle surface energy transfer of gold-nanoparticles, the fluorescence of dye on one end of molecular beacons was effectively quenched. When the target nucleic acids existed, the fluorescence of dye was quickly "turn-on" with high sensitivity. Due to the nanoparticle surface energy transfer effect of gold-nanoparticles, the designed platform performed better sensitivity than traditional microbead-based detection methods and realized quickly detection within 10min without purification steps. In addition, compared with the linear chain probes, the molecular beacons probes enabled higher specificity and wash-free operation. Through different dyes encoded, TK1-DNA and microRNA-21 were simultaneously detected in one step and finally quantified by flow cytometry. The proposed detection method was also capable of monitoring TK1-DNA and microRNA-21 levels in human serum. Our study provides the potential multidetection of DNA and RNA.