Latest News
Top Cited Article!
Our work, ‘Polymer-Based mRNA Delivery Strategies for Advanced Therapies,’ published in Advanced Healthcare Materials, was among the top 10 most cited papers in the journal in 2023!
Secondary Structure-Guided Assembly of Uniform Disk-Like Polymeric Micelles Incorporating Hydrophobic Platinum Drugs for Improved Tumor Targeting
Yuki Mochida, Horacio Cabral, Yutaka Miura, Kensuke Osada, Nobuhiro Nishiyama, Kazunori Kataoka Chem. Mater. 2025 Abstract Tailoring the secondary structure of a poly(amino acid) offers a powerful approach for precisely assembling nanostructures for biomedical applications. In this study, we demonstrated that the poly(α-l-glutamic acid) segment of the poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(α-l-glutamic acid) block copolymer forms an α-helix…
High-Throughput, High-Sensitivity Peptide Functional Assay Utilizing Colorimetric Polydiacetylene
Qingzhen Zhu, Horacio Cabral, Kaori Sugihara ACS Appl. Polym. Mater. 2025 Abstract Membrane-active peptides, including antimicrobial peptides, cell-penetrating peptides, and ionophores, often require time-consuming and costly techniques for functional characterization, creating a bottleneck in drug screening. In this study, we present a high-throughput, high-sensitivity peptide functional assay utilizing the mechanochromic polymer polydiacetylene (PDA). We demonstrate…
Dual-labelled polymeric micelles for singlet oxygen reporting in biological systems
Yasuhiro Nakagawa, Hayato Laurence Mizuno, Yuta Ushimaru, Jumpei Norimatsu, Kazunori Igarashi, Keita Masuda, Madoka Takai, Yasutaka Anraku, and Horacio Cabral Mol. Syst. Des. Eng., 2024, Advance Article Abstract Visualizing singlet oxygen (1O2) in biological systems could greatly enhance our understanding of its biological roles and offer new diagnostics and therapeutics. However, 1O2 is unstable and…
