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Cells
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Nanofluidics, Nanopores, and Nanomaterials for Understanding Biology
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Nanofluidics, Nanopores, and Nanomaterials for Understanding Biology

A special issue of Cells (ISSN 2073-4409). This special issue belongs to the section "Cell Methods".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 March 2026 | Viewed by 2532

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Malgorzata A. Witek

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Chemistry, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66047, USA
Interests: microfluidics; liquid biopsy markers; exosomes; circulating tumor cells; cfDNA; leukemia; epithelial cancers
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Owing to vast advancements in the nanotechnology field, we see remarkable developments in science aiming to address a wide range of bioengineering challenges. This ranges from the design of highly functional nanomaterials and testing new detection strategies using nanostructures to optimizing drug delivery nano-systems for precision medicine. Nanofluidics and nanopores utilizing resistive pulse sensing and/or fluorescence detection attract interest for the sensing and analysis of single molecules. These transducers can identify the sequence or structural features of a single molecule, quantity them, identify interactions with other molecules, and measure single molecule reaction kinetics. Such a sensing mode provides immense advantages over an ensemble-average assessment. Single molecules can be evaluated without bulk interference, allowing for real time measurement in a label-free manner using electronic readouts.

We invite contributions to this Special Issue of Cells titled "Nanofluidics, Nanopores, and Nanomaterials for Understanding Biology". This issue seeks to present a wide variety of topics highlighting the advantages of “nanoscale” in deciphering and answering questions related to biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, and biotechnology. Research manuscripts, opinions, and review articles may describe approaches for accomplishing surface modifications of nanomaterials, aspects of drug delivery, and engineering materials for molecular identification and characterization. Of particular interest are papers on how nanofluidics and nanopores can execute the specificity, selectivity, and biocompatibility necessary for improvements in signal-to-noise ratios. The submission of studies describing nanomaterial advantages for the identification of cellular phenotypes based on nucleic acid or protein sequencing, peptide characterization, quests for biomarkers and genetic variants, and the recognition of pathogen types using biological and solid-state nanostructures is encouraged.

Dr. Malgorzata A. Witek
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cells is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • nanofluidics
  • nanopores
  • nanomaterials
  • biology
  • biochemistry
  • bioengineering
  • biotechnology
  • drug delivery
  • sequencing
  • reaction kinetics
  • single-molecule detection

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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16 pages, 3369 KiB  
Article
Few-Layer Graphene-Based Optical Nanobiosensors for the Early-Stage Detection of Ovarian Cancer Using Liquid Biopsy and an Active Learning Strategy
by Obdulia Covarrubias-Zambrano, Deepesh Agarwal, Joan Lewis-Wambi, Raul Neri, Andrea Jewell, Balasubramaniam Natarajan and Stefan H. Bossmann
Cells 2025, 14(5), 375; https://doi.org/10.3390/cells14050375 - 4 Mar 2025
Viewed by 869
Abstract
Ovarian cancer survival depends strongly on the time of diagnosis. Detection at stage 1 must be the goal of liquid biopsies for ovarian cancer detection. We report the development and validation of graphene-based optical nanobiosensors (G-NBSs) that quantify the activities of a panel [...] Read more.
Ovarian cancer survival depends strongly on the time of diagnosis. Detection at stage 1 must be the goal of liquid biopsies for ovarian cancer detection. We report the development and validation of graphene-based optical nanobiosensors (G-NBSs) that quantify the activities of a panel of proteases, which were selected to provide a crowd response that is specific for ovarian cancer. These G-NBSs consist of few-layer explosion graphene featuring a hydrophilic coating, which is linked to fluorescently labeled highly selective consensus sequences for the proteases of interest, as well as a fluorescent dye. The panel of G-NBSs showed statistically significant differences in protease activities when comparing localized (early-stage) ovarian cancer with both metastatic (late-stage) and healthy control groups. A hierarchical framework integrated with active learning (AL) as a prediction and analysis tool for early-stage detection of ovarian cancer was implemented, which obtained an overall accuracy score of 94.5%, with both a sensitivity and specificity of 0.94. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanofluidics, Nanopores, and Nanomaterials for Understanding Biology)
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21 pages, 4616 KiB  
Article
Targeted Delivery to Dying Cells Through P-Selectin–PSGL-1 Axis: A Promising Strategy for Enhanced Drug Efficacy in Liver Injury Models
by Te-Sheng Lien, Der-Shan Sun and Hsin-Hou Chang
Cells 2024, 13(21), 1778; https://doi.org/10.3390/cells13211778 - 27 Oct 2024
Viewed by 1297
Abstract
To minimize off-target adverse effects and improve drug efficacy, various tissue-specific drug delivery systems have been developed. However, even in diseased organs, both normal and stressed, dying cells coexist, and a targeted delivery system specifically for dying cells has yet to be explored [...] Read more.
To minimize off-target adverse effects and improve drug efficacy, various tissue-specific drug delivery systems have been developed. However, even in diseased organs, both normal and stressed, dying cells coexist, and a targeted delivery system specifically for dying cells has yet to be explored to mitigate off-target effects within the same organ. This study aimed to establish such a system. By examining the surfaces of dying cells in vitro, we identified P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (PSGL-1) as a universal marker for dying cells, positioning it as a potential target for selective drug delivery. We demonstrated that liposomes conjugated with the PSGL-1 binding protein P-selectin had significantly greater binding efficiency to dying cells compared to control proteins such as E-selectin, L-selectin, galectin-1, and C-type lectin-like receptor 2. Using thioacetamide (TAA) to induce hepatitis and hepatocyte damage in mice, we assessed the effectiveness of our P-selectin-based delivery system. In vivo, P-selectin-conjugated liposomes effectively delivered fluorescent dye and the apoptosis inhibitor z-DEVD to TAA-damaged livers in wild-type mice, but not in PSGL-1 knockout mice. In TAA-treated wild-type mice, unconjugated liposomes required a 100-fold higher z-DEVD dose compared to P-selectin-conjugated liposomes to achieve a comparable, albeit less effective, therapeutic outcome in lowering plasma alanine transaminase levels and alleviating thrombocytopenia. This emphasizes that P-selectin conjugation enhances drug delivery efficiency by approximately 100-fold in mice. These results suggest that P-selectin-based liposomes could be a promising strategy for targeted drug delivery, enabling both diagnosis and treatment by specifically delivering cell-labeling agents and rescue agents to dying cells via the P-selectin–PSGL-1 axis at the individual cell level. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanofluidics, Nanopores, and Nanomaterials for Understanding Biology)
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