A targeted drug delivery system based on carbon nanohorns for targeting P-glycoprotein and delivering etoposide into cells to overcome multidrug resistance.

An easily self-assembled and gelated octa-peptide FHFDFHFD was chosen as a novel drug delivery system (DDS) for both tanshinone IIA and total tanshinone extract. The DDS showed increased loading capacity, sustained drug release and better anticancer capability. Our research proved that a hydrogel DDS of other traditional Chinese medicines is possible.

To date, several fluorescent probes modified by a single targeting agent have been explored. However, studies on the preparation of dual-function quantum dot (QD) fluorescent probes with dual-targeting action and a therapeutic effect are rare. Here, a dual-targeting CdTe/CdS QD fluorescent probe with a bovine serum albumin-glycyrrhetinic acid conjugate and arginine-glycine-aspartic acid was successfully prepared that could induce the apoptosis of liver cancer cells and showed enhanced targeting in in vitro cell imaging. Therefore, the as-prepared fluorescent probe in this work is an efficient diagnostic tool for the simultaneous detection of liver cancer and breast cancer cells.

In this study, we developed a novel simple fluorescence resonance-energy transfer (FRET) system between two-color CdTe quantum dots (QDs) assisted by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). Mercaptopropionic (MPA)-capped CdTe QDs serving as both donors and acceptors were successfully synthesized by changing the refluxing time in aqueous solution. CTAB micelles formed in water and minimized the distance between the donors and acceptors significantly by electrostatic interactions, improving FRET efficiency. Several factors that affected the fluorescence spectra of the FRET system were investigated. The prepared FRET system was feasible as an effective fluorescent probe to detect Hg(II) in aqueous solution. At pH 7.0, a linear relationship between the quenched fluorescence intensity of orange-emitting acceptors (QDs (A) ) and Hg(II) concentration was acquired in the range 5-250 nmol/L with a detection limit of 1.95 nmol/L. The developed method showed excellent analytical performance for Hg(II) with high sensitivity and acceptable selectivity, reproducibility and stability. This finding indicated that the method has a promising potential application for environmental monitoring. This study demonstrated the great promise of QDs for expedient, low-cost and highsensitivity detection of Hg(II).