Polydopamine nanoparticles were used to stabilize a nano-Pt catalyst to relieve tumor hypoxia for enhanced photodynamic therapy and photothermal therapy.

In epidemic regions of the world, brucellosis is a reemerging zoonosis with minimal mortality but is a serious public hygiene problem. Currently, there are various methods for brucellosis diagnosis, however few of them are available to be used to diagnose, especially for serious cross-reaction with other bacteria. To overcome this disadvantage, we explored a novel multi-epitope recombinant protein as human brucellosis diagnostic antigen. We established an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) based on this recombinant protein. 248 sera obtained from three different groups including patients with brucellosis (146 samples), non-brucellosis patients (82 samples), and healthy individuals (20 samples) were tested by indirect ELISA. To evaluate the assay, a receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and immunoblotting were carried out using these characterized serum samples. For this test, the area under the ROC curve was 0.9409 (95 % confidence interval, 0.9108 to 0.9709), and a sensitivity of 88.89 % and a specificity of 85.54 % was given with a cutoff value of 0.3865 from this ROC analysis. The Western blot results indicate that it is feasible to differentiate human brucellosis and non-brucellosis with the newly established method based on this recombinant protein. Our results obtained high diagnostic accuracy of the ELISA assay which encourage the use of this novel recombinant protein as diagnostic antigen to implement serological diagnosis of brucellosis.

A novel material with a large two-photon absorption cross-section was conjugated with a typical photosensitizer for inducing a FRET process. The photosensitizer can be excited by a one-/two-photon laser and then induced photo-toxicity in vitro and in vivo. The system presents great potential for improving treatment depth and the precision of traditional photodynamic therapy.

Aggregation‐induced emission (AIE) molecules possess notable advantages outperforming traditional aggregation caused quenching (ACQ) materials on various aspects. They are rapidly developed these years. More and more AIE luminogens (AIEgens) are designed to possess multifunctions such as the abilities of near‐infrared two‐photon absorption and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, which could be used for deep tissue imaging and photodynamic therapy. The AIEgens exhibit great potential in biological application field. However, despite the photophysics stability and ROS generation ability in aggregated states are favorable conditions, their applications in biological field are retarded by uncontrolled size, single imaging mode, low targeting efficiency, and also poor biocompatibility and dispersibility in physiological environment. The combination of AIEgen and lipid is a straightforward, promising, and intensively used way to solve the above problems. Due to the special amphipathic property of lipid, which results from a hydrophilic head and hydrophobic tail structure, there are various possibilities of combination modes between lipid and AIEgen. Even a little procedure or condition change during the synthesis process will impact the structure of obtained product, which can further influence its application. Herein, we summarize the synthesis methods of different AIEgen–lipid compounds with diverse structures and properties, as well as their biological applications in this contribution, which has not been presented before, being aimed at serving as a synthesis and application reference for these promising AIEgen–lipid compounds applied in biological region.