A stable photoactive metal-organic framework UiO-66(Zr) sensitized by adsorbed or directly added rhodamine B dye exhibited photocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution under visible-light illumination (λ≥ 420 nm). Using Pt as a co-catalyst, the adsorbed and directly added dye extremely enhanced the photocatalytic activity to 30 and 26 times the value afforded by bare Pt@UiO-66(Zr), respectively.

The construction of efficient enzyme mimetics for the hydrolysis of peptide bonds in proteins is challenging due to the high stability of peptide bonds and the importance of proteases in biology and industry. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) consisting of infinite crystalline lattices with metal clusters and organic linkers may provide opportunities for protease mimic which has remained unknown. Herein, we report that Cu2(C9H3O6)4/3 MOF (which is well known as HKUST-1 and denoted as Cu-MOF here), possesses an intrinsic enzyme mimicking activity similar to that found in natural trypsin to bovine serum albumin (BSA) and casein. The Michaelis constant (Km) of Cu-MOF is about 26,000-fold smaller than that of free trypsin indicating a much higher affinity of BSA for Cu-MOF surface. Cu-MOF also exhibited significantly higher catalytic efficiency than homogeneous artificial metalloprotease Cu(II) complexes and could be reused for ten times without losing in its activity. Moreover, Cu-MOF was successfully used to simulate trypsinization in cell culture since it dissociated cells in culture even without EDTA.

Though metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have inspired potential applications in biomedicine, cytotoxicity studies of MOFs have been relatively rare. Here we demonstrate for the first time that an easily available MOF, Fe-MIL-101, possesses intrinsic activity against human SKOV3 ovarian cancer cells and suppress the proliferation of SKOV3 cells (IC50 = 23.6 μg mL−1) and normal mouse embryonic fibroblasts (BABL-3T3, IC50 = 78.3 μg mL−1) cells. It was more effective against SKOV3 cells than typical anticancer drugs such as artesunate (ART, IC50 = 96.9 μg mL−1) and oxaliplatin (OXA, IC50 = 64.4 μg mL−1), but had less effect on normal BABL-3T3 cells compared with ART (IC50 = 36.6 μg mL−1) and OXA (IC50 = 13.8 μg mL−1). Fe-MIL-101 induced apoptosis of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) via G0/G1 cell cycle arrest and decreased the mitochondrial membrane potential in HUVECs and induced apoptosis. Furthermore, Fe-MIL-101 exhibited stronger antiangiogenic effects in HUVEC cells than antiangiogenic inhibitor (SU5416) via downregulation the expression of MMP-2/9. Our results reveal a new role of Fe-MIL-101 as a novel, non-toxic anti-angiogenic agent that restricted ovarian tumour growth. These findings could open a new avenue of using MOFs as potential therapeutics in angiogenesis-dependent diseases, including ovarian cancer.

We take advantage of the folic acid conjugated iron-based metal–organic frameworks (Fe-MIL-101) without any surface modification to design a simple and sensitive colorimetric assay to detect cancer cells based on its intrinsic peroxidase-like activity over broad pH range.