Xenobiotics such as the neonicotinoid pesticide, imidacloprid, are used globally, but their effects on native bee species are poorly understood. We studied the effects of sublethal doses of imidacloprid on olfactory learning in the native honey bee species, Apis cerana, an important pollinator of agricultural and native plants throughout Asia. We provide the first evidence that imidacloprid can impair learning in A. cerana workers exposed as adults or as larvae. Adults that ingested a single imidacloprid dose as low as 0.1 ng/bee had significantly reduced olfactory learning acquisition, which was 1.6-fold higher in control bees. Longer-term learning (1-17 h after the last learning trial) was also impaired. Bees exposed as larvae to a total dose of 0.24 ng/bee did not have reduced survival to adulthood. However, these larval-treated bees had significantly impaired olfactory learning when tested as adults: control bees exhibited up to 4.8-fold better short-term learning acquisition, though longer-term learning was not affected. Thus, sublethal cognitive deficits elicited by neonicotinoids on a broad range of native bee species deserve further study.

Targeted drug delivery by nanoparticles (NPs) is an essential technique to achieve the ideal therapeutic effect for cancer. However, it requires large amounts of work to imitate the biomarkers on the surface of the cell membrane and cannot fully retain the bio-function and interactions among cells. Cell membranes have been studied to form biomimetic NPs to achieve functions like immune escape, targeted drug delivery, and immune modulation, which inherit the ability to interact with the in vivo environments. Currently, erythrocyte, leukocyte, mesenchymal stem cell, cancer cell and platelet have been applied in coating photothermal agents and anti-cancer drugs to achieve increased photothermal conversion efficiency and decreased side effects in cancer ablation. In this review, we discuss the recent development of cell membrane-coated NPs in the application of photothermal therapy and cancer targeting. The underlying biomarkers of cell membrane-coated nanoparticles (CMNPs) are discussed, and future research directions are suggested.

Modulating the surface properties of nanoparticles (NPs) is an important approach to accomplish immune escape, prolonged the blood retention time, and enhance the ability of targeted drug delivery. The camouflage of cancer cell membrane onto nanoparticles has been proved to be an ideal approach to enhance active targeting ability of NPs. Herein, we isolated the membrane of melanoma cells to coat doxorubicin (DOX) and indocyanine green (ICG)-loaded hollow copper sulfide NPs (ID-HCuSNP@B16F10) for targeted photothermal therapy, photoacoustic imaging, and chemotherapy. A remarkable in vitro anticancer effect after irradiation and homologous targeting can be observed in B16F10 cells after the treatment of ID-HCuSNP@ B16F10. Moreover, ID-HCuSNP@B16F10 exhibits excellent photothermal effect in melanoma animal models and achieves a high tumor ablation rate. This biomimetic system can realize high drug loading efficiency, enhanced targeting ability, and ideal antitumor efficiency.