Latest News

  • Bone marrow vessels are hyperpermeable to macromolecules and nanoscale medicine in a size-dependent manner

    Bone marrow vessels are hyperpermeable to macromolecules and nanoscale medicine in a size-dependent manner

    John D. Martin, Kazuko Toh, Margaret R. Martin, Pengwen Chen, Chenyu Wang, Kazunori Igarashi, Fotios Mpekris, Triantafyllos Stylianopoulos, Matthew D. Stuber, Kazunori Kataoka, Horacio Cabral  JCR. 2025 Abstract Bone marrow (BM) has roles in health and disease, so systemically administered nanocarriers (NCs) targeting or avoiding BM are desirable. While the hydrodynamic diameter of NCs can be tuned to target or avoid various organs, the size dependence of extravasation from BM vessels is unknown. To clarify the…

  • Top Cited Article!

    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

    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

    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…