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Theranostics 2021; 11(19):9262-9295. doi:10.7150/thno.64511 This issue Cite

Review

Shining light on chiral inorganic nanomaterials for biological issues

Yining Shao^1#, Guilin Yang^1#, Jiaying Lin^2#, Xiaofeng Fan¹, Yue Guo¹, Wentao Zhu¹, Ying Cai¹, Huiyu Huang¹, Die Hu¹, Wei Pang¹, Yanjun Liu^3✉, Yiwen Li^2✉, Jiaji Cheng^2✉, Xiaoqian Xu^1✉

1. Key Laboratory of Cell Biology, Ministry of Public Health and Key Laboratory of Medical Cell Biology, Ministry of Education, China Medical University, Shenyang 110122, China.
2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, China.
3. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
#These authors contributed equally to this work.

✉ Corresponding authors: yjliuedu.cn; yiwenliedu.cn; jiajichengedu.cn; xqxuedu.cn.

Abstract

The rapid development of chiral inorganic nanostructures has greatly expanded from intrinsically chiral nanoparticles to more sophisticated assemblies made by organics, metals, semiconductors, and their hybrids. Among them, lots of studies concerning on hybrid complex of chiral molecules with achiral nanoparticles (NPs) and superstructures with chiral configurations were accordingly conducted due to the great advances such as highly enhanced biocompatibility with low cytotoxicity and enhanced penetration and retention capability, programmable surface functionality with engineerable building blocks, and more importantly tunable chirality in a controlled manner, leading to revolutionary designs of new biomaterials for synergistic cancer therapy, control of enantiomeric enzymatic reactions, integration of metabolism and pathology via bio-to nano or structural chirality. Herein, in this review our objective is to emphasize current research state and clinical applications of chiral nanomaterials in biological systems with special attentions to chiral metal- or semiconductor-based nanostructures in terms of the basic synthesis, related circular dichroism effects at optical frequencies, mechanisms of induced optical chirality and their performances in biomedical applications such as phototherapy, bio-imaging, neurodegenerative diseases, gene editing, cellular activity and sensing of biomarkers so as to provide insights into this fascinating field for peer researchers.

Keywords: chiral inorganic nanomaterials, induced optical chirality, phototherapy, neurodegenerative diseases, gene editing

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