Functional Porous Materials for Biomedical Applications

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Engineering Medicine/ENMED, Texas A&M University and Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, TX 77030, USA
Interests: porous materials; nanomedicine; drug delivery

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Guest Editor
Department of Nanomedicine, Houston Methodist Academic Institute, Houston, TX 77030, USA
Interests: cancer therapy; immunotherapy; pharmacology; drug delivery

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Guest Editor
College of biomedical engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
Interests: 2D materials; MOFs; hierarchically porous materials; nanocomposites; blood purification
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Porous materials, including, but not limited to, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), porous polymers, and porous liquids, possess functional pore walls, well-defined porosity, and high specific surface areas. These features enable high loading capacity for therapeutic and imaging agents, tunable release profiles, and site-specific delivery. By functionalizing the pore surfaces with targeting ligands (e.g., polymers, peptides, antibodies) or cell membrane coatings, these systems can be engineered for improved aqueous dispersibility, reduced plasma protein adsorption, evasion of the reticuloendothelial system, and precise targeting, across diverse therapeutic areas such as oncology, cardiovascular disease, infectious and inflammatory conditions, and neurological disorders, among others.

This Special Issue invites high-quality original research articles, reviews, and communications on the design, synthesis, and characterization of porous materials for biomedical applications. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Drug loading and release mechanisms
  • Imaging and theranostic applications
  • Surface functionalization and targeting strategies
  • Nanozyme activity and catalytic anti-inflammatory functions
  • Biostability, biodegradation, safety, pharmacokinetics, and in vivo efficacy

Our goal is to translate the fundamentals of porous-material design into biomedical impact, elucidating how pore architecture and surface chemistry influence therapeutic efficacy.

Dr. Xueying Ge
Dr. Yongbin Liu
Dr. Jiemin Wang
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • porous materials
  • metal–organic frameworks (MOFs)
  • covalent organic frameworks (COFs)
  • porous polymers
  • surface functionalization
  • targeted delivery
  • nanomedicine
  • nanozyme
  • theranostics

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 4154 KB  
Article
Potentiation of a Porous Silicon Therapeutic Vaccine in Colorectal Cancer via Oxaliplatin-Mediated Regulation of Myeloid-Driven Immunosuppression
by Yongbin Liu, Busra Akay Hacan, Junjun Zheng, Xueying Ge, Dongfang Yu, Zhe Chen, Yitian Xu, Ning Shao, Haifa Shen, Xuewu Liu, Roderic I. Pettigrew, Ping-Ying Pan, Shu-Hsia Chen and Junhua Mai
J. Funct. Biomater. 2026, 17(4), 185; https://doi.org/10.3390/jfb17040185 - 10 Apr 2026
Viewed by 303
Abstract
Although immunotherapy has shown great promise in treating various types of cancer, advanced tumors are often refractory due to a highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). We previously engineered a cancer therapeutic vaccine platform, µGCVax, by co-loading tumor antigen peptides, STING and TLR9 agonists [...] Read more.
Although immunotherapy has shown great promise in treating various types of cancer, advanced tumors are often refractory due to a highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). We previously engineered a cancer therapeutic vaccine platform, µGCVax, by co-loading tumor antigen peptides, STING and TLR9 agonists into porous silicon microparticles. While effective in models with lower disease burden, its efficacy against advanced colorectal cancer (CRC) was less promising due to the accumulation of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in TMEs. In this study, we investigated whether µGCVax-based immunotherapy in advanced CRCs could be potentiated via regulating MDSCs to reprogram the TME. In an advanced CT26 murine CRC model, we assessed µGCVax in combination with oxaliplatin, a standard CRC chemotherapeutic with established immunomodulatory effects. We demonstrated that oxaliplatin was preferentially taken up by monocytic MDSCs (M-MDSCs) and effectively reduced their abundance in the bone marrow, blood, spleen, and tumor. Relief of this immunosuppressive TME increased intratumoral infiltration of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells. Ultimately, the combination of oxaliplatin with µGCVax induced robust regression of established CRC tumors. These findings highlight that oxaliplatin synergizes with µGCVax by overcoming MDSC-mediated immunosuppression and enhancing antitumor immunity, representing a promising chemo-immunotherapy strategy for advanced CRC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Porous Materials for Biomedical Applications)
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