Responsive boron biomaterials and their biomedical applications

Due to the formation of dynamic boronate ester bonds between phenylboronic acid (PBA) and 1,2- and 1,3-diols, PBA-containing biomaterials show increasing applications in biomedical areas, including responsive nanobiomaterials for targeting delivery of chemical drugs, protein drugs, gene drugs and imaging agents in vitro and in vivo for detection of various bioactive molecules such as sialic acid, saccharides, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and dopamine. With the specific reaction between PBA and sialic acid, which is overexpressed in many kinds of cancer cells, PBA has been used as a targeting moiety for tumor-targeting drug delivery. Additionally, PBA as an electron acceptor affords nanomaterials Lewis acid-base coordination with electron donor atoms such as nitrogen and oxygen, which can be exploited for developing drug delivery systems with high drug loading. Furthermore, PBA-containing materials can stoichiometric consume reactive oxygen species (ROS) and show a nucleus targeting ability. This current review outlined PBA-containing biomaterials with various responsive abilities including sialic acid-targeting, sugars-binding, ROS-response, ATP-response, dopamine-binding, and nuclear targeting. On this basis, their biomedical applications were summarized.