Fibroblast activation protein-α (FAP) is a type II integral serine protease that is specifically expressed by activated fibroblasts. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in the tumor stroma have an abundant and stable expression of FAP, which plays an important role in promoting tumor growth, invasion, metastasis, and immunosuppression. For example, in females with a high incidence of breast cancer, CAFs account for 50–70% of the cells in the tumor’s microenvironment. CAF overexpression of FAP promotes tumor development and metastasis by influencing extracellular matrix remodeling, intracellular signaling, angiogenesis, epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, and immunosuppression. This review discusses the basic biological characteristics of FAP and its applications in the diagnosis and treatment of various cancers. We review the emerging basic and clinical research data regarding the use of nanomaterials that target FAP.

A photoacoustic imaging-guided anticancer strategy was developed based on poly-l-lysine functionalized melanin nanoparticles by integrating thermo-gene therapies.

In this paper, the d/l-AP5-interfaces are firstly fabricated by attaching d-alanine-pillar[5]arene and l-alanine-pillar[5]arene (d/l-AP5) onto the gold surface, and they exhibit a significantly different chiral influence on the morphology and the adsorption quantity of the adsorbed ctDNA molecules.