Sonodynamic Therapy with Metal Complexes: A New Promise in Cancer Therapy

In recent years, to overcome the problem of low tissue penetration power of light in photodynamic therapy (PDT), sonodynamic therapy (SDT) with ultrasound (US) as the drug stimulus has emerged as a potential alternative to PDT. The significantly higher tissue penetration capacity of US is reported to allow the treatment of deep-seated tumours. In general, organic molecules and nanomaterials dominate as the sonosensitizers in this area of research, and the potential of metal complexes in SDT is not yet well explored. In this highlight, we have summarized two recent literature reports in which researchers have explored the efficiency of metal complexes as sonosensitizers for the first time. These reports indicate the high potential of metal complexes in SDT.     

Combination of Immunotherapy and Photo-pyroptosis as Novel Anticancer Strategy

Immunotherapy has made great progress in clinical cancer treatment in recent years, but its therapeutic efficacy is significantly limited by the lack of immunogenicity in the tumor microenvironment. Pyroptosis is a type of programmed cell death in which the dying cancer cells produce inflammatory cytokines to relieve the immuno-suppressive microenvironment and thus increase anti-tumor immunity. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced during photodynamic therapy (PDT) are one of the efficient activators that induce pyroptosis. Recently, a few photosensitizers have emerged with the ability to induce immunogenic cancer cell death via pyroptosis, opening a new field for PDT. This highlight introduces the latest research on antitumor strategies achieved by the combination of immunotherapy and photodynamic therapy through photo-pyroptosis.     

Mobile FD-CR with High-Speed VTFET CMOS SOI Switch Under Channel Estimation Error

Silicon - In this paper, Silicon-on-Insulator vertical TFET based CMOS high-speed switch is implemented on Full-duplex Cognitive Radio (FD-CR), and the impact of cognitive radio (CR) node mobility...     

Design and Analysis of Gate Overlapped/Underlapped NWFET Based Lable Free Biosensor

Silicon - In this paper, gate all around (GAA) nanowire P-channel FET label free biosensor is proposed with cavity. Proposed structure is label free so it doesn’t require selective material...     

DNACDS: Cloud IoE big data security and accessing scheme based on DNA cryptography

The Internet of Everything (IoE) based cloud computing is one of the most prominent areas in the digital big data world. This approach allows efficient infrastructure to store and access big real-time data and smart IoE services from the cloud. The IoE-based cloud computing services are located at remote locations without the control of the data owner. The data owners mostly depend on the untrusted Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and do not know the implemented security capabilities. The lack of knowledge about security capabilities and control over data raises several security issues. Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) computing is a biological concept that can improve the security of IoE big data. The IoE big data security scheme consists of the Station-to-Station Key Agreement Protocol (StS KAP) and Feistel cipher algorithms. This paper proposed a DNA-based cryptographic scheme and access control model (DNACDS) to solve IoE big data security and access issues. The experimental results illustrated that DNACDS performs better than other DNA-based security schemes. The theoretical security analysis of the DNACDS shows better resistance capabilities.     

Polypyridyl CoII-Curcumin Complexes as Photoactivated Anticancer and Antibacterial Agents

Four new Co^II complexes, [Co(bpy)₂(acac)]Cl ( 1 ), [Co(phen)₂(acac)]Cl ( 2 ), [Co(bpy)₂(cur)]Cl ( 3 ), [Co(phen)₂(cur)]Cl ( 4 ), where bpy=2,2’-bipyridine ( 1 and 3 ), phen=1,10-phenanthroline ( 2 and 4 ), acac = acetylacetonate ( 1 and 2 ), cur=curcumin monoanion ( 3 and 4 ) have been designed, synthesized and fully characterized. The X-ray crystal structures of 1 and 2 indicated that the CoN₄O₂ core has a distorted octahedral geometry. The photoactivity of these complexes was tuned by varying the π conjugation in the ligands. Curcumin complexes 3 and 4 had an intense absorption band near 435 nm, which made them useful as visible-light photodynamic therapy agents; they also showed fluorescence with λ_em≈565 nm. This fluorescence was useful for studying their intracellular uptake and localization in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. The acetylacetonate complexes ( 1 and 2 ) were used as control complexes to understand the role of curcumin. The white-light-triggered anticancer profiles of the cytosol targeting complexes 3 and 4 were investigated in detail. These non-dark toxic complexes displayed significant apoptotic photo-cytotoxicity (under visible light) against MCF-7 cells through ROS generation. The control complexes 1 and 2 did not induce significant cell death in the light or dark. Interestingly, 1-4 produced a remarkable antibacterial response upon light exposure. Overall, the reported results here can increase the boundary of the Co^II-based anticancer and antibacterial drug development.     

Emulating Neuromorphic and In-Memory Computing Utilizing Defect Engineering in 2D-Layered WSeOx and WSe2 Thin Films by Plasma-Assisted Selenization Process

The neuromorphic and in-memory computing using memristors are promising for the building of the next generation computing systems. However, the diffusion dynamics of metal ions/atoms inside the switching medium impose variability in conducting filament (CF) formation, thus limiting their use in von-Neumann architecture. The precise modulation on the diffusion of metal ions/atoms and their reduction/oxidation probability holds promise to overcome the speed, size, and energy issues of present-day computers. Here, this study shows that the diffusion of metal ions can be modulated by defects inside the switching medium and confines metal filaments in a precise 1D channel. This filament confinement by the defect engineering leads to an anomalous switching mechanism with two interchangeable modes: unipolar threshold and bipolar modes. The variation between two modes can be modulated by controlling defects in the structures, leading to a uniform switching with low SET/RESET voltage variations of 17.3% and −17.6%, respectively. Moreover, the convolutional neural network is implemented to emulate synaptic plasticity and image recognition to achieve recognition accuracy of 87% due to a highly linear weight update, demonstrating its potential for in-memory computing.     

Engineered Exosomes as a Photosensitizer Delivery Platform for Cancer Photodynamic Therapy

Photodynamic therapy (PDT), a non-/minimally invasive cancer treatment method, has the advantages of low side effects, high selectivity, and low drug resistance. It is currently a popular cancer treatment method. However, given the shortcomings of photosensitizers such as poor photostability, poor water solubility, and short half-life in vivo when used alone, the development of photosensitizer nano-delivery platforms has always been a research hotspot to overcome these shortcomings. In the human body, various types of cells generally release bilayer extracellular vesicles known as exosomes. Compared with traditional materials, exosomes are currently an ideal drug delivery platform due to their homology, low immunogenicity, easy modification, high biocompatibility, and natural carrying capacity. Therefore, in this concept, we focus on the research status and prospects of engineered exosome-based photosensitizer nano-delivery platforms in cancer PDT.