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Nanotechnologies for lymph nodes imaging and target delivery

Edited by Chun Xu (University of Queensland, Australia), Lin-lin Bu (Wuhan University, China), Wei Han (Medical School of Nanjing University, China)

Lymph node metastasis is one of the most common ways of cancer metastasis. The regional lymph nodes play a pivotal role in the diagnosis, staging, and management of cancer. The presence of cancer cells in lymph nodes is the most important prognostic factor for cancer. Molecular imaging of the lymph nodes including cancer cells, immune cells and other molecules are very important for the diagnosis and management such as surgical management of cancer. In addition, the target delivery of therapeutics into lymph nodes is also beneficial for cancer management. 

This special collection in Journal of Nanobiotechnology aims for promoting the progress of molecular imaging and target delivery of lymph nodes, especially with the help of nanotechnologies. A selection of original research papers and reviews focusing on lymph node imaging and delivery with high clinical potential.


  1. Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is a crucial and effective strategy for prostate cancer, while systemic administration may cause profound side effects on normal tissues. More importantly, the ADT can easily...

    Authors: Yiming Guo, Jicheng Wu, Lefan Chen, Lujie Liu, Tianxiang Bi, Yuanwei Pan, Qian-Fang Meng, Chaoliang Wang, Lang Rao and Qi Li
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2024 22:192
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. The deployment of imaging examinations has evolved into a robust approach for the diagnosis of lymph node metastasis (LNM). The advancement of technology, coupled with the introduction of innovative imaging dr...

    Authors: Ze-Min Cai, Zi-Zhan Li, Nian-Nian Zhong, Lei-Ming Cao, Yao Xiao, Jia-Qi Li, Fang-Yi Huo, Bing Liu, Chun Xu, Yi Zhao, Lang Rao and Lin-Lin Bu
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2024 22:135
    Content type: Review Published on:

  3. Lower extremity deep venous thrombosis (LEDVT) affects patient’s quality of life for a long time, and even causes pulmonary embolism, which threatens human health. Current anticoagulant drugs in clinical treat...

    Authors: Zhining Zhao, Xiaodan Li, Yan Wang, Cheng Liu, Guixia Ling and Peng Zhang
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:439
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a successful clinical imaging platform for management of cancer and other health conditions that has seen significant progress in the past decade. However, clinical translation o...

    Authors: Badrinathan Sridharan and Hae Gyun Lim
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:437
    Content type: Review Published on:

  5. The combination of drug delivery with immune checkpoint targeting has been extensively studied in cancer therapy. However, the clinical benefit for patients from this strategy is still limited. B7 homolog 3 pr...

    Authors: Bing Chen, Kaifan Zheng, Shubin Fang, Kangping Huang, Chengchao Chu, Junyang Zhuang, Jin Lin, Shaoguang Li, Hong Yao, Ailin Liu, Gang Liu, Jizhen Lin and Xinhua Lin
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:378
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. For the treatment of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), the imaging of cervical lymph nodes and the evaluation of metastastic progression are of great significance. In recent years, the develop...

    Authors: Diya Xie, Yunlong Li, Jiahong Shi, Yao Ping Zhu, Yiqing Wang, Christopher J. Butch and Zhiyong Wang
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:342
    Content type: Research Published on:

  7. Staging lymph nodes (LN) is crucial in diagnosing and treating cancer metastasis. Biotechnologies for the specific localization of metastatic lymph nodes (MLNs) have attracted significant attention to efficien...

    Authors: Yuanliang Yan, Yuanhong Liu, Tongfei Li, Qiuju Liang, Abhimanyu Thakur, Kui Zhang, Wei Liu, Zhijie Xu and Yuzhen Xu
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:337
    Content type: Review Published on:

  8. Targeting EBV-proteins with mRNA vaccines is a promising way to treat EBV-related tumors like nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). We assume that it may sensitize tumors to immune checkpoint inhibitors.

    Authors: Yu Xiang, Miaomiao Tian, Juan Huang, Yueyi Li, Guangqi Li, Xue Li, Zedong Jiang, Xiangrong Song and Xuelei Ma
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:324
    Content type: Research Published on:

  9. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) possesses special biological behavior and clinicopathological characteristics, which is highly invasive and propensity to metastasize to lymph nodes, leading to a worse pro...

    Authors: Yi Pan, Longcai Liu, Yichen He, Luyi Ye, Xin Zhao, Zhiming Hu, Xiaozhou Mou and Yu Cai
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:312
    Content type: Research Published on:

  10. Lymph nodes play a pivotal role in tumor progression as key components of the lymphatic system. However, the unique physiological structure of lymph nodes has traditionally constrained the drug delivery effici...

    Authors: Pan He, Haitian Tang, Yating Zheng, Yongfu Xiong, Hongwei Cheng, Jingdong Li, Yang Zhang and Gang Liu
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:292
    Content type: Review Published on:

  11. Sustained inflammatory invasion leads to joint damage and progressive disability in several autoimmune rheumatic diseases. In recent decades, targeting M1 macrophage polarization has been suggested as a promis...

    Authors: Jinteng Li, Feng Ye, Xiaojun Xu, Peitao Xu, Peng Wang, Guan Zheng, Guiwen Ye, Wenhui Yu, Zepeng Su, Jiajie Lin, Yunshu Che, Zhidong Liu, Pei Feng, Qian Cao, Dateng Li, Zhongyu Xie…
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:280
    Content type: Research Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:336

  12. Lymph nodes targeted drug delivery is an attractive approach to improve cancer immunotherapy outcomes. Currently, the depth of understanding of afferent and efferent arms in brain immunity reveals the potentia...

    Authors: Yangzhi Qi, Wei Xiong, Qianxue Chen, Zhifei Ye, Cailei Jiang, Yan He and Qingsong Ye
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:254
    Content type: Review Published on:

  13. Lymph node metastasis is a frequent occurrence in a variety of tumour forms and poses an enormous challenge to cancer treatment. This process is critical to the development of the disease and is frequently lin...

    Authors: Huan-Rong Lan, You-Ni Zhang, Yue-Jun Han, Shi-Ya Yao, Meng-Xiang Yang, Xiao-Gang Xu, Xiao-Zhou Mou and Ke-Tao Jin
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:247
    Content type: Review Published on:

  14. Sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastasis is an important promoter of distant metastasis in breast cancer. Therefore, the timely diagnosis and precise treatment are crucial for patient staging and prognosis. Howeve...

    Authors: Yanfeng Dai, Xiang Yu, Yuehong Leng, Xingzhou Peng, Junjie Wang, Yifan Zhao, Juan Chen and Zhihong Zhang
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:245
    Content type: Research Published on:

  15. Therapeutic tumor vaccines have attracted considerable attention in the past decade; they can induce tumor regression, eradicate minimal residual disease, establish lasting immune memory and avoid non-specific...

    Authors: Ao He, Xiaoye Li, Zhuo Dai, Qiang Li, Yu Zhang, Meng Ding, Zhi-fa Wen, Yongbin Mou and Heng Dong
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:236
    Content type: Review Published on:

  16. Although cancer immunotherapy is a compelling approach against cancer, its effectiveness is hindered by the challenge of generating a robust and durable immune response against metastatic cancer cells. Nanovac...

    Authors: Yueyi Li, Shen Li, Zedong Jiang, Keqin Tan, Yuanling Meng, Dingyi Zhang and Xuelei Ma
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:212
    Content type: Review Published on:

  17. Targeted chemo-phototherapy has received widespread attention in cancer treatment for its advantages in reducing the side effects of chemotherapeutics and improving therapeutic effects. However, safe and effic...

    Authors: Mengyue Li, Geng Yang, Yue Zheng, Jiazhen Lv, Wanyi Zhou, Hanxi Zhang, Fengming You, Chunhui Wu, Hong Yang and Yiyao Liu
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:186
    Content type: Research Published on:

  18. TMVP1 is a novel tumor targeting polypeptide screened by our laboratory with a core sequence of five amino acids LARGR. It specially binds to vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-3 (VEGFR-3), which is m...

    Authors: Xueqian Wang, Geyang Dai, Guiying Jiang, Danya Zhang, Ling Wang, Wen Zhang, Huang Chen, Teng Cheng, Ying Zhou, Xiao Wei, Fei Li, Ding Ma, Songwei Tan, Rui Wei and Ling Xi
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:130
    Content type: Research Published on:

  19. Antigen self-assembly nanovaccines advance the minimalist design of therapeutic cancer vaccines, but the issue of inefficient cross-presentation has not yet been fully addressed. Herein, we report a unique app...

    Authors: Runping Su, Jingjing Gu, Juanjuan Sun, Jie Zang, Yuge Zhao, Tingting Zhang, Yingna Chen, Gaowei Chong, Weimin Yin, Xiao Zheng, Bingbing Liu, Li Huang, Shuangrong Ruan, Haiqing Dong, Yan Li and Yongyong Li
    Citation: Journal of Nanobiotechnology 2023 21:120
    Content type: Research Published on: