Breast cancer remains a malignancy that poses a serious threat to human health worldwide. Chemotherapy is one of the most widely effective cancer treatments in clinical practice, but it has some drawbacks such as poor targeting, high toxicity, numerous side effects, and susceptibility to drug resistance. For auto-amplified tumor therapy, a nanoparticle designated GDTF is prepared by wrapping gambogic acid (GA)-loaded dendritic porous silica nanoparticles (DPSNs) with a tannic acid (TA)-Fe(III) coating layer. GDTF possesses the properties of near-infrared (NIR)-enhanced and pH/glutathione (GSH) dual-responsive drug release, photothermal conversion, GSH depletion and hydroxyl radical (·OH) production. When GDTF is exposed to NIR laser irradiation, it can effectively inhibit cell proliferation and tumor growth both in vitro and in vivo with limited toxicity. This may be due to the synergistic effect of enhanced tumor accumulation, and elevated reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, GSH depletion, and TrxR activity reduction. This study highlights the enormous potential of auto-amplified tumor therapy.

The precise synthesis of non-precious metal single-atom electrocatalysts is crucial for enhancing the yield of highly active reactive oxygen species (ROSs). Conventional oxidation methods, such as Fenton or NaClO processes, suffer from poor efficiency, high energy demand, and secondary pollution. In contrast, heterogeneous electro-Fenton systems based on cascade oxygen reduction reactions (ORRs), which require low operational voltage and cause pollutant degradation through both direct electron transfer and ROS generation, have emerged as a promising alternative. Recent studies showed that carbon cathodes decorated with atomically dispersed transition metals can effectively integrate the excellent conductivity of carbon supports with the tunable surface chemistry of metal centers. However, the electronic structure of active sites intrinsically hinders the simultaneous achievement of high activity and selectivity in cascade ORRs. This review summarizes the advances, specifically from 2020 to 2025, in understanding the mechanism of cascade ORRs and the synthesis of transition metal-based single-atom catalysts in cathode electrocatalysis for efficient wastewater treatment, and discusses the key factors affecting treatment performance. While employing atomically engineered cathodes is a promising approach for energy-efficient wastewater treatment, future efforts should overcome the barriers in active site control and long-term stability of the catalysts to fully exploit their potential in addressing water pollution challenges.

In this work, novel FeOOH/BiO2-x binary heterostructure composites with UV-Vis-NIR full-spectrum response were successfully constructed by anchoring highly dispersed amorphous FeOOH on BiO2-x nanosheets. The FeOOH/BiO2-x photocatalysts exhibited highly enhanced photocatalytic activity for the degradation of chlorophenols under UV-Vis-NIR full-spectrum irradiation. The amorphous FeOOH could effectively broaden the light response range, modulate the energy band structure and promote the separation and transfer of photogenerated electron-holes pairs, thus boosting the activation of molecular oxygen to generate •O2-. Furthermore, FeOOH/BiO2-x maintained excellent photocatalytic performance upon real solar light of varied irradiance for consecutive 7 days, indicative of great potential towards phenolic pollutants degradation in water. The redox couples of Fe3+/Fe2+ and Bi(3+x)+/Bi3+ also accelerate the efficient generation of reactive oxygen species over FeOOH/BiO2-x with improved durability. This work not only contributes to the design of full-spectrum responsive photocatalysts, but also provides a rational strategy for molecular oxygen activation.