Congratulations to professor Yiguang Wang for publishing a paper on Nature Nanotechnology

On May 23,2022, professor Yiguang Wang from State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, School of PharmaceuticalSciences,Peking University published a paper titled A pyroptosis nanotumer for cancer therapy on Nature Namotechmology.

Pyroptosis is a gasdermin-mediated programmed necrosis that occurs via membrane perforation and that can be exploited for biomed-ical applications in cancer therapy. However, inducing specific pyroptotic cancer cell death while sparing normal cells is challenging.Here, we report an acid-activatable nanophotosensitizer library that can be used to spatiotemporally target distinctstages of endosomalmaturation, cnabling tumnable cellular pyroptosis. Specific activation of phospholipase C signalling transduction in early endosomestriggers gasdermin-E-mediated pyroptosis, which is dramatically reduced when acid-activatable nanophotosensitizers are transportedinto late endosomeslysosomes.This nanotuner platform induces pyroptotic cell death with up to 40-fold tunability in various gasder-min-E-positive human cancers, resulting in enhanced anti-tumour efficacy and minimized systemic side effects. This study offers newinsights into how to engineer nanomedicines with tunable pyroptosis activity through specific targeting of distinct endocytic signal-ling for biomedical applications.