This article explores the development of intelligent CpG nanoplatforms as a novel approach to targeted cancer immunotherapy. The research focuses on leveraging CpG oligonucleotides to trigger immunogenic cell death and enhance anti-tumor immune responses. These advanced nanoplatforms are designed to remodel the tumor immune microenvironment, creating conditions unfavorable to cancer cell survival. By combining nanotechnology with immunological principles, this work represents a significant advancement in precision medicine for cancer treatment. The study demonstrates how strategic manipulation of immune pathways through intelligent delivery systems can improve therapeutic efficacy while potentially minimizing systemic side effects associated with conventional cancer treatments.

Extracellular vesicles as drug and gene delivery vehicles in central nervous system diseases. Sci. 2025, 13, 1161–1178. https://doi.org/10.1039/D4BM01394H.

Pharmaceutical science is advancing toward precision medicine through the development of stimuli-responsive drug delivery systems that overcome limitations of conventional formulations, including poor bioavailability and non-specific distribution. These intelligent systems, composed of functional polymers, lipids, and nanostructures, dynamically adjust their physicochemical properties in response to endogenous or exogenous stimuli such as pH, temperature, and glucose levels. By mimicking biological feedback mechanisms, stimuli-responsive delivery systems enable targeted, on-demand drug release particularly beneficial for cancer treatment, endocrinology, and regenerative medicine. This bioresponsive approach represents a significant paradigm shift in controlled drug delivery, offering programmable release kinetics that enhance therapeutic efficacy and patient outcomes through intelligent, adaptive formulation design.

Researchers have developed AI-designed protein-lipid hybrid nanoparticles (PLHNs) to address limitations of conventional cancer therapies, including poor drug specificity and systemic toxicity. These innovative nanoparticles combine the biocompatibility and drug-loading capacity of lipid carriers with the biological recognition capabilities of proteins, offering improved stability and controlled drug release. Artificial intelligence optimizes PLHN design by predicting ideal lipid-protein combinations, particle characteristics, and targeting ligand selection, eliminating inefficient trial-and-error experimentation. The hybrid systems employ both passive targeting through the enhanced permeability and retention effect and active targeting via protein-mediated receptor recognition, enabling precise therapeutic delivery to cancer cells while extending applications to other complex diseases.

Quantum nanomaterials are transforming precision medicine through their unique optical, electronic, and magnetic properties derived from quantum confinement effects. Semiconductor quantum dots, carbon quantum dots, and graphene-based nanostructures demonstrate exceptional characteristics including size-dependent fluorescence, sharp emission spectra, and ultra-high sensitivity. These properties enable critical applications in bioimaging, biosensing, targeted drug delivery, and theranostic platforms. In diagnostics, quantum dots provide superior sensitivity for detecting disease biomarkers, facilitating early diagnosis and personalized medicine approaches. Therapeutically, these nanomaterials function as drug and gene carriers, photodynamic agents, and multifunctional platforms that seamlessly integrate imaging with therapeutic modalities, advancing integrated treatment strategies.

Researchers have developed a novel vitamin B12-based therapy called nitrosylcobalamin (NO-Cbl) that demonstrates promising tumor-targeting potential against glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most lethal and treatment-resistant brain cancers. The breakthrough addresses a critical challenge in glioblastoma treatment: the blood-brain barrier's impermeability to most anticancer drugs. Through comprehensive pharmacokinetic studies and cell line experiments, scientists found that NO-Cbl selectively penetrates the blood-brain barrier and effectively targets glioblastoma tissue. Notably, the therapy exhibited synergistic effects when combined with existing treatments including TRAIL and temozolomide, suggesting enhanced anticancer activity. These findings offer significant clinical potential, as current glioblastoma patients typically survive fewer than fifteen months despite aggressive multimodal treatment approaches.

Gliomas, particularly glioblastoma, secrete extracellular vesicles that mediate tumor microenvironment communication and drive immunotherapeutic resistance. These vesicles carry immunosuppressive cargoes including PD-L1, non-coding RNAs, and metabolic regulators, capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier to modulate both local and systemic immunity. Glioma-derived extracellular vesicles promote myeloid-derived suppressor cell expansion, polarize tumor-associated macrophages toward immunosuppressive phenotypes, impair dendritic cell antigen presentation, and induce T-cell dysfunction. Enriched non-coding RNAs within these vesicles regulate critical signaling pathways involved in immune suppression. Understanding these EV-mediated mechanisms offers potential therapeutic targets for overcoming immunotherapeutic resistance in glioma patients through combined immune and metabolic intervention strategies.

Stimuli-responsive biomaterials represent an innovative approach to precision drug delivery, enabling controlled release of therapeutics in response to internal or external signals. These smart materials can sense diverse cues including temperature, light, pH, enzymes, and glucose, triggering on-demand payload release that enhances therapeutic efficacy while minimizing off-target toxicity. The technology encompasses multi-responsive systems capable of integrating multiple signals for sophisticated spatiotemporal dosing control. Recent applications span small molecules, proteins, peptides, nucleic acids, vaccines, and cellular therapeutics, demonstrating significant potential in targeted therapy and regenerative medicine. While these platforms show considerable promise for clinical translation, key challenges remain regarding safety, manufacturability, and reproducibility, requiring continued development for next-generation intelligent delivery systems.

Targeted cancer therapy using tumor-specific nanoparticles represents a groundbreaking approach in modern oncology. By exploiting the unique characteristics of the tumor microenvironment and leveraging advanced nanotechnology, these nanosystems enhance therapeutic efficacy while minimizing off-target toxicity. Tumor-targeting nanoparticles are designed to improve the solubility, stability, and bioavailability of anticancer drugs. They achieve selective tumor accumulation via passive targeting, driven by the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect, and active targeting through functionalized ligands like antibodies, peptides, or aptamers.Recent advancements include the development of stimuli-responsive nanoparticles that release their payload in response to tumor-specific conditions such as acidic pH, hypoxia, or enzymatic activity.

This comprehensive roadmap addresses critical strategies to improve lung cancer outcomes by prioritizing five key areas: advancing understanding of tumor biology, accelerating therapeutic innovation, enhancing early detection methodologies, strengthening prevention initiatives, and implementing interception approaches. Authored by leading researchers from Stanford University, the Francis Crick Institute, and other institutions, the article presents an evidence-based framework for transforming clinical practice and reducing lung cancer burden. The collaborative effort synthesizes current knowledge and identifies priority research directions necessary to drive meaningful progress in patient outcomes, survival rates, and quality of life across diverse populations affected by this disease.

Immunosuppressive cell populations within the tumor microenvironment, including regulatory T cells, myeloid-derived suppressor cells, and tumor-associated macrophages, undergo metabolic reprogramming that sustains their suppressive function while creating a hostile environment antagonistic to effector immune cells. These metabolically adapted cells deplete essential nutrients and generate inhibitory metabolites, thereby reinforcing immune dysfunction and limiting the efficacy of checkpoint blockade and adoptive cell therapies. This article examines the immunometabolic mechanisms underlying immune evasion and explores therapeutic strategies targeting these metabolic programs to remodel the tumor microenvironment and enhance immunotherapy effectiveness through precision metabolic interventions.

Carbon dot-integrated edible films represent an innovative advancement in food packaging technology, combining the unique properties of carbon nanoparticles with biocompatible polymer matrices. This emerging approach addresses critical challenges in modern food preservation by leveraging the antimicrobial, antioxidant, and optical properties of carbon dots to extend shelf life while maintaining product safety. The integration of these nanoparticles into edible film matrices creates synergistic effects that enhance barrier properties, mechanical strength, and active packaging capabilities. This research demonstrates significant potential for developing sustainable, environmentally friendly packaging solutions that are simultaneously consumable with food products, reducing waste while improving food safety standards across various applications in the food industry.

Researchers have developed PL@mBiME, an innovative lipid nanoparticle platform designed to treat glioblastoma through dual immunotherapy mechanisms. This system delivers mRNA encoding a bispecific macrophage engager that simultaneously targets tumor cells and reprograms immunosuppressive macrophages toward pro-inflammatory states, while also releasing PD-L1 antibodies to enhance adaptive immunity. The platform utilizes tumor-responsive features including pH-sensitive charge reversal for improved brain tumor accumulation and glutathione-triggered antibody release. Across multiple glioblastoma models, this coordinated activation of innate and adaptive immunity achieved significant tumor regression, extended survival, and durable immune memory without notable toxicity, offering a promising approach to overcome limitations of conventional immunotherapies in solid tumors.

Gliomas represent biologically distinct subtypes with varying clinical outcomes and immune microenvironments, with IDH-wildtype glioblastoma being the most aggressive form. Despite immunotherapy's success in other solid tumors, its efficacy in glioma remains limited due to a profoundly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. This comprehensive review examines the establishment and regulatory mechanisms underlying glioma's immunosuppressive state, detailing global immune characteristics and critical cellular and molecular foundations. The analysis emphasizes the myeloid-cell network, particularly tumor-associated macrophages, while identifying key biomarkers and emerging immunotherapeutic strategies aimed at reshaping the immunosuppressive microenvironment to enhance treatment outcomes.

GeoVax Labs has filed a resale registration statement covering 865,804 warrant shares, raising significant concerns among investors regarding the company's financial viability. The clinical-stage biopharmaceutical firm, focused on vaccines and immunotherapies for infectious diseases and cancers, faces material risks including substantial operating losses of approximately $21.5 million and a going concern warning from auditors. With existing cash expected to sustain operations only through mid-second quarter 2026, GeoVax confronts critical financing challenges. Additionally, the company faces potential Nasdaq delisting risks due to quantitative listing triggers and significant shareholder dilution from warrant and option overhang. These combined pressures underscore the urgent need for successful financing or strategic partnerships to ensure long-term viability.

Our results demonstrate that targeted PNP-GDEPT has the potential to enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy and targeted therapy against ovarian cancer while minimizing side effects on healthy cells. This treatment is effective irrespective of cisplatin resistance status and warrants further investigation.

Recent progress in material science has led to the development of new drug delivery systems that go beyond the conventional approaches and offer greater accuracy and convenience in the application of therapeutic agents. This review discusses the evolutionary role of nanocarriers, hydrogels, and bioresponsive polymers that offer enhanced drug release, target accuracy, and bioavailability. Oncology, chronic disease management, and vaccine delivery are some of the applications explored in this paper to show how these materials improve the therapeutic results, counteract multidrug resistance, and allow for sustained and localized treatments. The review also discusses the translational barriers of bringing advanced materials into the clinical setting, which include issues of biocompatibility, scalability, and regulatory approval. Methods to overcome these challenges include surface modifications to reduce immunogenicity, scalable production methods such as microfluidics, and the harmonization of regulatory systems. In addition, the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is opening new frontiers in material science and personalized medicine.

Cancer is a significant global socioeconomic burden, as millions of new cases and deaths occur annually. In 2020, almost 10 million cancer deaths were recorded worldwide. Advancements in cancer gene therapy have revolutionized the landscape of cancer treatment. An approach with promising potential for cancer gene therapy is introducing genes to cancer cells that encode for chemotherapy prodrug metabolizing enzymes, such as Cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, which can contribute to the effective elimination of cancer cells. This can be achieved through gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapy (GDEPT). CYP enzymes can be genetically engineered to improve anticancer prodrug conversion to its active metabolites and to minimize chemotherapy side effects by reducing the prodrug dosage. Rational design, directed evolution, and phylogenetic methods are some approaches to developing tailored CYP enzymes for cancer therapy. Here, we provide a compilation of genetic modifications performed on CYP enzymes aiming to build highly efficient therapeutic genes capable of bio-activating different chemotherapeutic prodrugs. Additionally, this review summarizes promising preclinical and clinical trials highlighting engineered CYP enzymes’ potential in GDEPT. Finally, the challenges, limitations, and future directions of using CYP enzymes for GDEPT in cancer gene therapy are discussed.

High-grade glioma is one of the deadliest primary tumors of the central nervous system. Despite the many novel immunotherapies currently in development, it has been difficult to achieve breakthrough results in clinical studies. The reason may be due to the suppressive tumor microenvironment of gliomas that limits the function of specific immune cells (e.g., T cells) which are currently the primary targets of immunotherapy. However, tumor-associated macrophage, which are enriched in tumors, plays an important role in the development of GBM and is becoming a research hotspot for immunotherapy. This review focuses on current research advances in the use of macrophages as therapeutic targets or therapeutic tools for gliomas, and provides some potential research directions.

Oncolytic virotherapy can lead to tumor lysis and systemic anti-tumor immunity, but the therapeutic potential in humans is limited due to the impaired virus replication and the insufficient ability to overcome the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). To solve the above problems, we identified that Indoleamine 2, 3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) inhibitor Navoximod promoted herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) replication and HSV-1-mediated oncolysis in tumor cells, making it a promising combination modality with HSV-1-based virotherapy. Thus, we loaded HSV-1 and Navoximod together in an injectable and biocompatible hydrogel (V-Navo@gel) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) virotherapy. The hydrogel formed a local delivery reservoir to maximize the viral replication and distribution at the tumor site with a single-dose injection. Notably, V-Navo@gel improved the disease-free survival time of HCC- bearing mice and protects the mice against tumor recurrence. What’s more, V-Navo@gel also showed an effective therapeutic efficacy in the rabbit orthotopic liver cancer model. Mechanistically, we further discovered that our combination strategy entirely reprogramed the TME through single-cell RNA sequencing. All these results collectively indicated that the combination of Navoximod with HSV-1 could boost the viral replication and reshape TME for tumor eradication through the hydrogel reservoir.