SCIENCE CHINA Materials•2026•DOI: 10.1007/s40843-026-4383-8
Conventional cancer therapies remain constrained by undruggable oncogenic proteins and acquired resistance. Proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) have emerged as a transformative modality that harnesses the ubiquitin-proteasome system to selectively degrade target proteins, offering advantages over traditional small-molecule inhibitors. However, clinical translation of PROTACs is impeded by intrinsic physicochemical limitations: high molecular weight, poor bioavailability, and lack of tumor-specific delivery. Integrating PROTACs with nanotechnology has yielded advanced nano-PROTACs platforms. Nanocarriers enhance solubility and stability, optimize pharmacokinetics, and enable spatiotemporally controlled drug release through passive or active targeting. This review systematically summarizes recent advances in engineering multifunctional nano-PROTACs for cancer therapy, with particular emphasis on design strategies by which nanoengineering enhances PROTAC performance. We evaluate how these platforms improve anticancer efficacy and minimize systemic toxicity while exploring their therapeutic potential in monotherapy and synergistic treatment settings. Finally, we discuss current challenges and future perspectives, providing a theoretical and technical foundation for next-generation nano-PROTACs as a precise and potent strategy in precision oncology.
SCIENCE CHINA Materials•2026•DOI: 10.1007/s40843-025-3666-2
Light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) are promising for low-cost, solution-processed display and lighting applications, yet achieving high efficiency and color purity remains challenging. Here, we report two ionic multi-resonance (MR) emitters with narrowband blue emission for high-color-purity LECs. By covalently bonding an imidazolium functional group into a boron/nitrogen-doped polycyclic skeleton, the emitters retain the narrowband emission and high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of the MR core while gaining ionic character. The design exploits two types of nitrogen atoms in the imidazolium unit: the pyrrolic N at the 1-position forms a para-B-π-N linkage, elevating excited-state energy levels and blue-shifting emission; the pyridinic N at the 3-position provides a quaternization site, yielding intrinsically ionic emitters compatible with ionic hosts. The emitters exhibit blue emission with narrow full-width at half-maximum of 26–27 nm and high PLQYs of 95%–97% in solid-state films. LECs based on these emitters achieve narrowband blue electroluminescence with CIE coordinates of (0.12, 0.26) and a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 4.6%, representing the first narrowband blue LECs based on intrinsically ionic MR emitters. This work demonstrates a viable molecular design strategy for high-color-purity LECs, addressing the long-standing trade-off between efficiency and color purity in this technology.
SCIENCE CHINA Materials•2026•DOI: 10.1007/s40843-025-3682-6
Metal single-atoms with optimized coordination structure on highly accessible substrate can maximize the metal utilization efficiency along with enhancing catalytic activities. Herein, axial nitrogen-coordinated Fe-N5 sites on N-doped carbon (denoted as FeN5@N-C) hollow microplates are fabricated via a unique Fe3+-chelated polydopamine assisted hollowing strategy using ZIF-L microplates as multifunctional templates. Due to the powerful chelating and adhesive ability of polydopamine, this hollow-carbon strategy can be extended to fabricate single-atom Fe-N-C hollow structures with different shapes and encapsulate other transition-metal single atoms (Ni, Co, Mn, and Cu) into the N-doped carbon hollow microplates. The FeN5@N-C hollow microplates exhibit outstanding oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) capability with an impressive half-wave potential of 0.93 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode and high stability, which can serve as air-cathode catalysts for high-performance Zn-air batteries with high peak power density of 225.3 mW cm−2 and stable cyclability of up to 400 h. Comprehensive analysis and theoretical calculations elucidate that axial nitrogen coordination in Fe-N5 catalytic sites, unlike the planar Fe-N4 configuration, can compete well with the bonding of OH* through additional 3d-2p orbital hybridization, thereby giving moderate bonding strength to enhance the ORR activity.
SCIENCE CHINA Materials•2026•DOI: 10.1007/s40843-025-4037-1
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) poses a therapeutic challenge due to its anatomical complexity and the limitations of conventional treatments in achieving precise targeting and sufficient efficacy. Here, we report a multifunctional platform based on heat-triggered electrospray self-healing porous poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microspheres encapsulating indocyanine green (ICG), sequentially coated with a tannic acid-Fe3+ (TAF) metal-phenolic network and fibronectin (FN) for targeted photothermal/chemodynamic combination therapy. The resulting functional microspheres (PI-TAF@FN) exhibit an average size of 1.9 μm, excellent colloidal stability, heat-induced self-healing performance, and a high photothermal conversion efficiency of 51.4%. These microspheres specifically target NPC cells via FN-mediated integrin recognition, enabling ICG/TAF-mediated photothermal therapy under 808-nm laser irradiation and TAF-mediated chemodynamic therapy, leading to enhanced cancer cell apoptosis in vitro. In a mouse NPC model, the combined photothermo-chemodynamic therapy achieved effective tumor treatment with minimal systemic toxicity. Furthermore, the dual TAF and ICG components allow multimode FN-targeted T1-weighted magnetic resonance/fluorescence/thermal imaging for precision NPC management. This electrospray self-healing porous microsphere platform offers a unique theranostic strategy that can integrate diverse therapeutic and diagnostic components for precision oncology.