Kuan‐Ju Chen

A grabby substrate: A 3D nanostructured substrate, namely, a silicon-nanopillar (SiNP) array coated with epithelial-cell adhesion-molecule antibody (anti-EpCAM), shows enhanced local topographic interactions between nanoscale cell-surface components and the substrates surface, resulting in enhanced cell-capture efficiency when employed to isolate viable cancer cells from whole-blood samples (see schematic and SEM image of a captured cancer cell).

Laser-triggered nanobomb: Size-controlled gold supramolecular nanoparticles (Au-SNPs) were synthesized from 2 nm gold colloids by a supramolecular self-assembly approach. These Au-SNPs exhibited significantly enhanced photothermal effects and could be used in conjunction with laser irradiation for the selective destruction of cancer cells (see picture) after the incorporation of a target-specific ligand. Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”. Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

On-demand drug release: Magnetothermally responsive drug-encapsulated supramolecular nanoparticles for on-demand drug release in vivo have been developed. The remote application of an alternative magnetic field heats the magnetic particles that effectively trigger the release of the drug. An acute drug concentration can be delivered to the tumor in vivo, resulting in an improved therapeutic outcome.

A supramolecular approach has been developed for the preparation of supramolecular nanoparticles (SNPs) with variable sizes (30-450 nm) from three different molecular building blocks using a cyclodextrin/adamantane recognition system. Positron emission tomography (PET) was employed to study the biodistribution and lymph node drainage of the SNPs in mice. The sizes of the SNPs affect their in vivo characteristics (see picture).

Nanoparticles are regarded as promising transfection reagents for effective and safe delivery of nucleic acids into a specific type of cells or tissues providing an alternative manipulation/therapy strategy to viral gene delivery. However, the current process of searching novel delivery materials is limited due to conventional low-throughput and time-consuming multistep synthetic approaches. Additionally, conventional approaches are frequently accompanied with unpredictability and continual optimization refinements, impeding flexible generation of material diversity creating a major obstacle to achieving high transfection performance. Here we have demonstrated a rapid developmental pathway toward highly efficient gene delivery systems by leveraging the powers of a supramolecular synthetic approach and a custom-designed digital microreactor. Using the digital microreactor, broad structural/functional diversity can be programmed into a library of DNA-encapsulated supramolecular nanoparticles (DNA⊂SNPs) by systematically altering the mixing ratios of molecular building blocks and a DNA plasmid. In vitro transfection studies with DNA⊂SNPs library identified the DNA⊂SNPs with the highest gene transfection efficiency, which can be attributed to cooperative effects of structures and surface chemistry of DNA⊂SNPs. We envision such a rapid developmental pathway can be adopted for generating nanoparticle-based vectors for delivery of a variety of loads.