Advances in Engineered Nano-Biosensors for Bacteria Diagnosis and Multidrug Resistance Inhibition.

Bacterial infections continue to pose a significant global health challenge, with the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria and biofilms further complicating treatment options. The rise of pan-resistant bacteria, coupled with the slow development of new antibiotics, highlights the urgent need for new therapeutic strategies. Nanotechnology-based biosensors offer fast, specific, sensitive, and selective methods for detecting and treating bacteria; hence, it is a promising approach for the diagnosis and treatment of MDR bacteria. Through mechanisms, such as destructive bacterial cell membranes, suppression of efflux pumps, and generation of reactive oxygen species, nanotechnology effectively combats bacterial resistance and biofilms. Nano-biosensors and related technology have demonstrated their importance in bacteria diagnosis and treatment, providing innovative ideas for MDR inhibition. This review focuses on multiple nanotechnology approaches in targeting MDR bacteria and eliminating antimicrobial biofilms, highlighting nano-biosensors via photodynamics-based biosensors, eletrochemistry biosensors, acoustic-dynamics sensors, and so on. Furthermore, the major challenges, opportunities of multi-physical-field biometrics-based biosensors, and relevant nanotechnology in MDR bacterial theranostics are also discussed. Overall, this review provides insights and scientific references to harness the comprehensive and diverse capabilities of nano-biosensors for precise bacteria theranostics and MDR inhibition.

Ultrafast Cancer Cells Imaging for Liquid Biopsy via Dynamic Self-Assembling Fluorescent Nanoclusters.

Lung cancer-specific clinical specimens, such as alveolar lavage fluid, are typically identified by microscopic biopsy, which has limited specificity and sensitivity and is highly susceptible to human manipulation. In this work, we present an ultrafast, specific, and accurate cancer cell imaging strategy based on dynamically self-assembling fluorescent nanoclusters. The presented imaging strategy can be used as an alternative or a complement to microscopic biopsy. First, we applied this strategy to detect lung cancer cells, and established an imaging method that can rapidly, specifically, and accurately distinguish lung cancer cells (e.g., A549, HepG2, MCF-7, Hela) from normal cells (e.g., Beas-2B, L02) in 1 min. In addition, we demonstrated that the dynamic self-assembly process that fluorescent nanoclusters formed by HAuCl4 and DNA are first generated at the cell membrane and then gradually enter the cytoplasm of lung cancer cells in 10 min. In addition, we validated that our method enables the rapid and accurate imaging of cancer cells in alveolar lavage fluid samples from lung cancer patients, whereas no signal was observed in the normal human samples. These results indicate that the dynamic self-assembling fluorescent nanoclusters-based cancer cells imaging strategy could be an effective non-invasive technique for ultrafast and accurate cancer bioimaging during liquid biopsy, thus providing a safe and promising cancer diagnostic platform for cancer therapy.