Zhiqin Deng

Targeted anticancer prodrugs that can be controllably activated are highly desired for personalized precision medicine in cancer therapy. Such prodrugs with unique action modes are also promising to overcome drug resistance. Herein, we report coumaplatin, an oxaliplatin-based and photocaged Pt(IV) prodrug, to realize nuclear accumulation along with "on-demand" activation. This prodrug is based on a Pt(IV) complex that can be efficiently photoactivated via water oxidation without the requirement of a reducing agent. Coumaplatin accumulates very efficiently in the nucleoli, and upon photoactivation, this prodrug exhibits a level of photocytotoxicity up to 2 orders of magnitude higher than that of oxaliplatin. Unexpectedly, this prodrug presents strikingly enhanced tumor penetration ability and utilizes a distinct action mode to overcome drug resistance; i.e., coumaplatin but not oxaliplatin induces cell senescence, p53-independent cell death, and immunogenic cell death along with T cell activation. Our findings not only provide a novel strategy for the rational design of controllably activated and nucleolus-targeted Pt(IV) anticancer prodrugs but also demonstrate that accumulating conventional platinum drugs to the nucleus is a practical way to change its canonical mechanism of action and to achieve reduced resistance.

Electrocatalytic nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR) affords a bifunctional character in the carbon-free ammonia synthesis and remission of nitrate pollution in water. Here, we fabricated the Co3O4 nanosheet array with cobalt vacancies on carbon cloth (vCo-Co3O4/CC) by in situ etching aluminum-doped Co3O4/CC, which exhibits an excellent Faradaic efficiency of 97.2% and a large NH3 yield as high as 517.5 μmol h–1 cm–2, better than the pristine Co3O4/CC. Theoretical calculative results imply that the cobalt vacancies can tune the local electronic environment around Co sites of Co3O4, increasing the charge and reducing the electron cloud density of Co sites, which is thus conducive to adsorption of NO3– on Co sites for greatly enhanced nitrate reduction. Furthermore, the vCo-Co3O4 (311) facet presents excellent NO3RR activity with a low energy barrier of about 0.63 eV on a potential-determining step, which is much smaller than pristine Co3O4 (1.3 eV).