Elsevier

Talanta

Volume 224, 1 March 2021, 121805
Talanta

Review
In vivo guiding inorganic nanozymes for biosensing and therapeutic potential in cancer, inflammation and microbial infections

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.talanta.2020.121805Get rights and content

Highlights

  • An attempt was made to provide an overview on the classification of nanozymes in vivo.

  • The current challenges, development of nanozymes and their integration into clinical platforms were discussed.

  • This review indicates the way for providing some useful data in development of nanozymes for clinical applications.

Abstract

Researchers have recently introduced some artificial enzymes based on nanomaterials that show significant catalytic activity relative to native enzymes called nanozyme. These nanozymes show superior performance than conventional catalysts and are considered as fascinating candidates for introducing the next generation of biomaterials in various industrial and biomedical fields. Recently, nanozymes have received a great deal of attention in biomedical applications due to their potential properties such as long-term stability, low cost, mass production capability, and controllable catalytic activity. Due to the intrinsic catalytic activity of nanoparticles (NPs) as nanozymes and their ability to be regulated in biomedical processes, this review paper focuses on the in vivo applications of nanozymes in biosensing and therapeutic activities. Despite the challenges and benefits of each approach, this paper attempts to provide an appropriate motivation for the classification of different nanozymes followed by their application in biomedical activities including in vivo biosensing and therapeutic potential in cancer, inflammation and microbial infections. Finally, some ongoing challenges and future perspective of nanozymes in biomedical application were surveyed. In conclusion, this paper may provide useful information regarding the development of nanozymes as promising platforms in biomedical settings due to expedited diagnosis, the advancement of multifactorial therapies and their pronounced stability.

Introduction

Nanozymes are defined as nanomaterials with dimensions of 1–100 nm that exhibit catalytic activities similar to those of natural enzymes [[1], [2], [3]]. The enzymatic activity of nanozymes is related to chemical and physical properties such as the presence of active groups and the size and morphology of the particles, respectively [2,4,5]. Initially, nanozymes were used for industrial activities such as biodiesel production, nanobiosensors, materials synthesis, and so on, whereas its medical activities are drastically increasing in the recent years [[6], [7], [8]]. Nanozymes can sometimes perform more than one catalytic activity, which in some cases are considered as merits and some other cases are considered as disadvantageous points [9,10]. To date, more than 540 nanozymes of 49 elements have been reported [11], which iron oxide (IO) NPs and gold (Au) NPs attract more attention in biomedical activities due to their safety and chemically inert in vivo [1,12,13]. Thus, despite the widespread advances in nanozymes, only a few cases have been used in biomedical applications.

Accordingly, the reported results show that nanozymes, despite their simpler manufacturing processes, cheaper and more stability in different environments than previous methods [[14], [15], [16]], are encountered with a number of limitations such as environmental pollution, unintended toxicity in biological activities, and high stability in the body [1,2,10]. Therefore, because of the importance of biological, chemical, therapeutic, and diagnostic activities of NPs in the form of enzymatic matrix and nanozymes, this review aims to provide a policy and possible comparisons between the published reports.

Since the enzymatic activities of the NPs are almost inhibited upon immobilization of biomolecules on their surface, thus the enzymatic activities of the NPs are more discussed in the field of nanozymes. The enzymatic activity of nanozymes is correlated with the physicochemical features of NPs [17,18]. Substantial progress has been developed in the field of nanozymes due to their novel characteristics relative to native enzymes and synthetic enzymes [19]. Several nanomaterials have been used to imitate a number of native enzymes for a wide range of applications from sensing to medicine and beyond [19]. In the therapeutic systems, the application of nanozymes is crucially based on the antioxidant activity of nanozymes and associated reduction of reactive nitrogen or oxygen species [20,21]. Accordingly, the utilization of nanozymes can be defined to treat several disorders such as the neurodegenerative diseases [22,23], inflammation and stroke [24,25], diabetes [26], and cancer [27,28]. It has also been depicted that the utilization of nanozymes can be considered as a potential approach in imaging [29,30]. However, due to the importance of safety and quality factors, the use of nanozymes and even NPs containing enzymes for the detection of diseases and abnormalities in human has received more attention, recently [31,32]. In this regard, a variety of reports have been presented showing the speed of operation, accuracy and user-friendly in different conditions [[33], [34], [35], [36], [37]].

Section snippets

Classification of nanozymes

In general, the enzymatic activity of nanozymes is based on the atoms on the surface and core of the NPs [1]. Therefore, not only factors such as size, morphology, coating, surface modification, pH and temperature can greatly affect the catalytic activity of nanozymes, but also the main factor in the intrinsic activity of nanozymes is their atomic composition. Thus, the integration of different NPs could alter the intrinsic nature of nanozymes or provide multiple enzymatic activities [9,38].

Applications

Nanomaterials/NPs can perform catalytic activities like biological macromolecules. Therefore, nanomaterials with catalytic activity can be used in the therapeutic applications (Table 2), including biosensing and delivery. However, due to the toxicity of nanomaterials, the application of nanozymes in biomedical settings has a severe constraint [41]. Thus, the use of nanozymes in medical diagnosis is much more promising than the treatment section.

Challenges and future perspective of nanozymes in biomedical activities

Despite significant advances in the development and application of nanozymes in biomedical activities, there are some challenges to be addressed as following:

  • 1.

    Since nanozymes are produced by trial and error methods, to control their catalytic activities, it is necessary to thoroughly investigate the simulations and computational approaches before making nanozymes. Unfortunately, despite published reports such as Li et al. [93], theoretical calculations on the manufacture of nanozymes have

Summary and outlook

Enzymatic biosensing by nanozymes that is a hot topic in biotechnology has become commercialized and expanded in the last decade to increase the quality of healthcare. Compared to previous methods, the use of enzymatic biosensing has not only accelerated diagnostic, sample preparation, and real-time testing, but also increased sensitivity and detection limit. In this way, nanozymes can provide biomedical operation from lab to hospital, and have the ability to simultaneously analyze several

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgment

The authors acknowledge the Research grant from China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Grant No. 2020M672291. The statement here is the sole responsibility of the authors.

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