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Highly efficient catalytic scavenging of oxygen free radicals with graphene-encapsulated metal nanoshields

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Abstract

Normal levels of oxygen free radicals play an important role in cellular signal transduction, redox homeostasis, regulatory pathways, and metabolic processes. However, radiolysis of water induced by high-energy radiation can produce excessive amounts of exogenous oxygen free radicals, which cause severe oxidative damages to all cellular components, disrupt cellular structures and signaling pathways, and eventually lead to death. Herein, we show that hybrid nanoshields based on single-layer graphene encapsulating metal nanoparticles exhibit high catalytic activity in scavenging oxygen superoxide(·\({O_{\bar 2}}\)), hydroxyl (·OH), and hydroperoxyl (HO2·) free radicals via electron transfer between the single-layer graphene and the metal core, thus achieving biocatalytic scavenging both in vitro and in vivo. The levels of the superoxide enzyme, DNA, and reactive oxygen species measured in vivo clearly show that the nanoshields can efficiently eliminate harmful oxygen free radicals at the cellular level, both in organs and circulating blood. Moreover, the nanoshieldslead to an increase in the overall survival rate of gamma ray-irradiated mice to up to 90%, showing the great potential of these systems as protective agentsagainst ionizing radiation.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Nos. 2016YFA0204100 and 2016YFA0200200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81471786, 21573220, and 21303191), the strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDA09030100), Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (No. 13JCQNJC13500). We also acknowledge the Shanghai Supercomputer Center for the comp-utational resources. The authors would like to thank Dr. Guosong Hong (Harvard University) for some helpful discussions.

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  1. Junying Wang, Xiaoju Cui, and Haobo Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Materials Physics and Preparing Technology, School of Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300350, China

    Junying Wang, Xiaoyu Mu, Haixia Liu, Changlong Liu & Xiao-Dong Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, 116023, China

    Xiaoju Cui, Haobo Li, Jianping Xiao, Dehui Deng & Xinhe Bao

  3. State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Xiaoju Cui & Dehui Deng

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, China

    Xiaoju Cui & Haobo Li

  5. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Nuclear Medicine, Institute of Radiation Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Tianjin, 300192, China

    Yuan-Ming Sun & Xuhui Xue

  6. State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, 510060, China

    Jiang Yang

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  1. Junying Wang
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  2. Xiaoju Cui
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Correspondence to Xiao-Dong Zhang or Dehui Deng.

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Wang, J., Cui, X., Li, H. et al. Highly efficient catalytic scavenging of oxygen free radicals with graphene-encapsulated metal nanoshields. Nano Res. 11, 2821–2835 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1912-9

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