Abstract
The treatment of spinal cord injuries, infections such as SARS-CoV-2, and the early detection of cancer present significant challenges in modern biomedicine. Neuroprosthetics are plagued by device failure and chronic inflammation, and severe side effects accompany systemic treatment. Chronic inflammation is also a major in SARS-CoV-2 infection. The pandemic caused by the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 proved a need for advancement in both prevention and treatment of similar diseases. Equally pressing is the requirement for early cancer detection as a leading cause of death worldwide. Addressing these issues requires a multifaceted approach combining materials chemistry and traditional medicine. Hydrogel-based neural interfaces present a promising approach to combat the inflammation, oxidative stress, and tissue encapsulation that rapidly degrades neural interfaces post-implantation. This work investigates a novel platform that exploits covalent attachment of hydrogels to achieve mechanical compatibility while enabling sustained, localized delivery of anti-inflammatory agents at the implant interface. Concurrently, carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as versatile nanomaterials in therapeutics and diagnostics. Strategic design of heteroatom-doped CDs can mitigate viral infections and reduce oxidative stress. Thiol-functionalized CDs exhibit promising in vitro results in reducing SARS-CoV-2 uptake and free radicals involved in the inflammatory cascade. Exploiting tunable surface chemistry of CDs enables the development of a highly specific biosensing platform that relies on the intrinsic fluorescence of CDs to detect key biomarkers. Carbon nitride dots are presented as a biosensor for mushroom-derived tyrosinase enzyme —a model biomarker for human malignant melanoma—demonstrating selectivity over other analytes. Together, these investigations underscore the vital role of materials chemistry in tackling urgent biomedical challenges, laying a foundation for next-generation devices and therapies that can outperform existing methodologies.