This review focuses on recent advances in inorganic nanoparticles based dual-model imaging and therapeutic approaches for anti-atherosclerosis, including clinical trials.

As nanomedicine-based clinical strategies have continued to develop, the possibility of combining chemotherapy and singlet oxygen-dependent photodynamic therapy (PDT) to treat pancreatic cancer (PaC) has emerged as a viable therapeutic modality. The efficacy of such an approach, however, is likely to be constrained by the mechanisms of drug release and tumor oxygen levels. In the present study, we developed an Fe(III)-complexed porous coordination network (PCN) which we then used to encapsulate PTX (PCN-Fe(III)-PTX) nanoparticles (NPs) in order to treat PaC via a combination of chemotherapy and PDT. The resultant NPs were able to release drug in response to both laser irradiation and pH changes to promote drug accumulation within tumors. Furthermore, through a Fe(III)-based Fenton-like reaction these NPs were able to convert H₂O₂ in the tumor site to O₂, thereby regulating local hypoxic conditions and enhancing the efficacy of PDT approaches. Also these NPs were suitable for use as a T₁-MRI weighted contrast agent, making them viable for monitoring therapeutic efficacy upon treatment. Our results in both cell line and animal models of PaC suggest that these NPs represent an ideal agent for mediating effective MRI-guided chemotherapy-PDT, giving them great promise for the clinical treatment of PaC.

Surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) has been applied in many fields due to its advantages of fast and nondestructive detection. For semiconductors, the large‐scale electron‐hole pair separation of heterojunction is conducive to efficient charge transfer, which is a promising SERS substrate. Here, we designed a Fe₂O₃@CeO₂ heterojunction substrate by hydrothermal method and explored its enhancement mechanism in detail. α‐Fe₂O₃ is a promising semiconductor with a narrow bandgap, and CeO₂ has adequate oxygen vacancies on the surface. Combing α‐Fe₂O₃ and CeO₂ into a shell‐core structure, Fe₂O₃@CeO₂ heterojunction presents higher SERS performance than pure Fe₂O₃ and CeO₂ for methyl orange (MO) molecule with a limit of detection (LOD) of 5 × 10⁻⁸ mol/L. Under the excitation of 514 nm, Fe₂O₃ can produce an effective exciton resonance due to its narrow bandgap (2.01 eV). The oxygen vacancy in CeO₂ acts as the active site to promote the adsorption of molecules and facilitate the photo‐induced charge transfer (PICT) between the substrate and MO molecules. Therefore, the high SERS performance of Fe₂O₃@CeO₂ heterojunction is achieved due to the coupling effect of excitons resonance, molecular resonance, and PICT resonance. It is found that Fe₂O₃@CeO₂ has good SERS performance and stability to organic pesticides, especially metamitron (LOD = 5 × 10⁻⁹ mol/L). This work combines the advantages of Fe₂O₃ being prone to producing photoelectrons and abundant oxygen vacancies of CeO₂, providing a reference for designing semiconductor SERS.

In this study, we reported a flower-like Cu₂O@Ag SERS substrate for distinguish three types of cancer cells from white blood cells by using machine learning-assisted LDA, after separating cancer cells from blood samples via a microfluidic chip.

Self-assembled peptide nanosheets functionalized with gold nanorods provide a functional nanoplatform for photothermal therapy of tumors.