Abstract
With the rapid advancement and progress of nanotechnology, nanomaterials with enzyme-like catalytic activity have fascinated the remarkable attention of researchers, due to their low cost, high operational stability, adjustable catalytic activity, and ease of recycling and reuse. Nanozymes can catalyze the same reactions as performed by enzymes in nature. In contrast the intrinsic shortcomings of natural enzymes such as high manufacturing cost, low operational stability, production complexity, harsh catalytic conditions and difficulties of recycling, did not limit their wide applications. The broad interest in enzymatic nanomaterial relies on their outstanding properties such as stability, high activity, and rigidity to harsh environments, long-term storage and easy preparation, which make them a convenient substitute instead of the native enzyme. These abilities make the nanozymes suitable for multiple applications in sensing and imaging, tissue engineering, environmental protection, satisfactory tumor diagnostic and therapeutic, because of distinguished properties compared with other artificial enzymes such as high biocompatibility, low toxicity, size dependent catalytic activities, large surface area for further bioconjugation or modification and also smart response to external stimuli. This review summarizes and highlights latest progress in applications of metal and metal oxide nanomaterials with enzyme/multienzyme mimicking activities. We cover the applications of sensing, cancer therapy, water treatment and anti-bacterial efficacy. We also put forward the current challenges and prospects in this research area, hoping to extension of this emerging field. In addition to therapeutic potential of nanozymes for disease prevention, their practical effects in diagnostics, to monitor the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and related biomarkers for future pandemics will be predicted.
Highlights
Enzymes, as biological macromolecules, are mainly composed of proteins, which can efficiently and selectively catalyze a diverse biochemical reactions [1, 2]
We present a comprehensive review of applications of metal and metal oxide nanozyme in terms of chemical sensing and biosensing, cancer treatment, water purification and anti-bacterial efficiency (Table 1)
Cupric oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs), as the dual-functional nanozyme, demonstrated the intrinsic GSH-oxidase and peroxidase-like activity coupling with terephthalic acid (TA) and GSH to construct a self-cascade fluorescent system
Summary
As biological macromolecules, are mainly composed of proteins, which can efficiently and selectively catalyze a diverse biochemical reactions [1, 2]. Since the finding of Fe3O4 nanoparticles as peroxidase mimics in 2007 [19], a large amount of studies on metal and metal oxide nanozymes have been reported. Dual colorimetric and SERS detection of Hg2+ was developed based on the stimulus of intrinsic oxidase-like catalytic activity of Ag-CoFe2O4/rGO nanocomposites [55].
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