Employing antagonistic C-X-C motif chemokine receptor 4 antagonistic peptide functionalized NaGdF4 nanodots for magnetic resonance imaging-guided biotherapy of breast cancer.

C-X-C motif chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) is a promising therapeutic target of breast cancer because it is overexpressed on cell surface of all molecular subtypes of breast cancer including triplenegative breast cancer (TNBC). Herein, CXCR4 antagonistic peptide-NaGdF4 nanodot conjugates (termed as anti-CXCR4-NaGdF4 NDs) have been constructed for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided biotherapy of TNBC through conjugation of the C-X-C Motif Chemokine 12 (CXCL12)-derived cyclic peptide with tryptone coated NaGdF4 nanodots (5 ± 0.5 nm in diameter, termed as Try-NaGdF4 NDs). The as-prepared anti-CXCR4-NaGdF4 NDs exhibits high longitudinal relaxivity (r1) value (21.87 mM-1S-1), reasonable biocompatibility and good tumor accumulation ability. The features of anti-CXCR4-NaGdF4 NDs improve the tumor-MRI sensitivity and facilitate tumor biotherapy after injection in mouse-bearing MDA-MB-231 tumor model in vivo. MRI-guided biotherapy using anti-CXCR4-NaGdF4 NDs enables to suppress 46% tumor growth. In addition, about 47% injection dose of anti-CXCR4-NaGdF4 NDs is found in the mouse urine at 24 h post-injection. These findings demonstrate that anti-CXCR4-NaGdF4 NDs enable to be used as renal clearable nanomedicine for biotherapy and MRI of breast cancer.

Octahedral Distortion Co-Regulation via Dual Strategies toward Luminescence Enhancement for the MA4InBr7 Perovskite Single Crystal.

A series of novel perovskite single crystals are innovatively grown. Aiming to enhance the luminescence performance, octahedral distortion co-regulation via dual strategies for the as-prepared perovskite single crystals is performed. The distortion of the octahedral structure strengthens the electron-phonon coupling and electron localization, resulting in a more stable self-trapped state, which thereby increases the potential for radiative recombination, accompanied by the self-trapped exciton emission. Accordingly, the luminescence spectra of the as-prepared MA4In0.975Sb0.025Br7 single crystal can cover the 450-800 nm range, and the photoluminescence quantum yield is up to 81.25%.

Engineered Electronic Structure and Carrier Dynamics in Emerging Cs2AgxNa1-xFeCl6 Perovskite Single Crystals.

Lead-free double perovskites have attracted noteworthy attention due to their compositional flexibility and electronic diversity. In this study, we hydrothermally grow a new class of Cs2AgxNa1-xFeCl6 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) perovskite single crystals with high thermal stability. The substitution of B-site cation allows to regulate the crystallographic and band structure, which gives rise to enlarged band absorbance close to the near-infrared region (∼800 nm) via composition engineering. Ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy (TAS) certifies that the decay time of excited-state absorption is 5.02 and 2450 ps in the case of Cs2NaFeCl6 and Cs2AgFeCl6, respectively. The corresponding charge carrier diffusion length accordingly enhances from 3.7 to 311 nm by means of increasing Ag dopant concentration. Structurally, the primitive cell shrinks due to the partial replacement of [NaCl6]5- octahedra by [AgCl6]5- octahedra. It is proved theoretically as well as experimentally that the introduction of Ag species can effectively enhance the electron mobility (from 1.06 to 15.3 cm2 V-1 s-1) by ∼15 times through realizing stronger orbital coupling of the conductive ions, which enables such a novel double perovskite to be a potential candidate for the optoelectronic and photovoltaic applications.

Modification of electron structure on the semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes for effectively electrosensing guanine and adenine.

The as-prepared SWNTs are always a mixture of metallic (m-) and semiconducting (s-) tubes with quite different electrochemical properties which is a major barrier for their application in many fields. Based on the noncovalent interactions between planar aromatic molecules and SWNTs, the pyrene derivatives 1-docosyloxylmethylpyrene (DomP) was synthesized to separate the m-SWNTs and s-SWNTs via its significant selectivity toward s-SWNTs, i.e. electronic modulation. Before and after doping with electron, the electrochemical properties of s-SWNTs were studied and compared with that of m-SWNTs by electronic absorption spectroscopy, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammogram. As demonstrated, the electrocatalytic activity of electron modulated s-SWNTs was significantly improved and even better than m-SWNTs. Thus a novel sensor was constructed with the electron modulated s-SWNTs modified electrode and successfully applied for simultaneous determination of guanine and adenine.

Novel Strategy for the Investigation on Chirality Selection of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes with DNA by Electrochemical Characterization.

There is a correlation between specific bases of DNA molecules and the chirality of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), which contributes the recognition ability of DNA toward partner species of chiral SWNTs. A novel strategy of electrochemical characterization is reported here for the investigation on chirality selection of (7,6) and (6,5) SWNTs with various DNA sequences, and it is found that both DNA strand length and sequence composition significantly affected the interaction of chiral SWNTs with DNA. Then (7,6) and (6,5) SWNTs were distinguished from each other with DNA sequences chosen by electrochemical methods, which demonstrated an effective and excellent feasibility for the strategy and presented a new insight into DNA-SWNT applications. This strategy can also be applied to more chiral SWNTs and DNA sequence recognition and may serve as a prescreening method for the recognition and separation of single-chirality SWNTs, which would be a new contribution to the further development of DNA-SWNT hybrids.