Recently, the research team led by XJTU professor Wu Daocheng from the Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Application, School of Life Science and Technology, inspired by the structure of a lollipop, developed a novel strategy to prepare lollipop-like ultra-long circulating dual-drug-loaded nanoparticles. Two antitumor drugs, namely DOX and Gossypol, with excellent tumor synergistic therapeutic efficacy, are combined to form nanoparticles via π–π stacking. Due to the differences of DOX and Gossypol in hydrophilicity and molecular structure, the π–π stacking is not stable and there is a gap between the two systems. Dopamine was added to fill in the gap and polymerizes from small molecules to polydopamine. Polydopamine strongly connects dual-drug molecules, which not only significantly enhanced the stability of the nanoparticle system, but also dramatically slowed down the drug release rate. As a result, drug realizes ultralong blood circulation.

The research result was published online in Advanced Functional Materials (Impact Factor: 13.325), an international well-known journal in the materials field, under the title Ultra-long circulating lollipop-like nanoparticles assembled with gossypol, doxorubicin and poly-dopamine via π–π stacking for tumor synergistic therapy. The Biomedical-information Engineering Laboratory of the State Ministry of Education in the School of Life Science and Technology of XJTU is the institutional affiliation of the first author and the corresponding author. Doctoral candidate Wang Ya from the School of Life Science and Technology is the first author. Professor Wu Daocheng is the corresponding author.