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Cell state as a design variable in nanomedicine

Nature Reviews Materials (2026) Cite this article

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Nanomedicine has advanced through increasingly sophisticated particle design, yet generalizable rules for productive delivery remain scarce. This gap persists in part because the receiving cell is still treated as assay background rather than as an active design variable. Bringing cell state into the design space can help to translate context-dependent performance into more actionable and predictive rules for nanomedicine development.

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Fig. 1: Representative examples of how cell state shapes nanoparticle delivery and informs state-aware design.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Wenhan Wang, Weijiang Yu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biohub, Chicago, IL, USA

    Wenhan Wang  (王文晗), Weijiang Yu  (余伟江) & Zongjie Wang  (王宗杰)

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Wenhan Wang  (王文晗) & Zongjie Wang  (王宗杰)

  3. Department of Chemistry, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Weijiang Yu  (余伟江)

  4. Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

    Binbin Ying  (应斌斌)

  5. Division of Digestive and Liver Disease, Department of Internal Medicine, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

    Binbin Ying  (应斌斌)

  6. Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

    Binbin Ying  (应斌斌)

Authors
  1. Wenhan Wang  (王文晗)
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  2. Weijiang Yu  (余伟江)
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  3. Binbin Ying  (应斌斌)
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  4. Zongjie Wang  (王宗杰)
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Contributions

W.W. and W.Y. researched data for the article. B.Y. contributed substantially to discussion of the content. All authors wrote the article. Z.W. reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zongjie Wang  (王宗杰).

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Competing interests

Z.W. is a co-founder and equity holder of CTRL Therapeutics. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Wang, W., Yu, W., Ying, B. et al. Cell state as a design variable in nanomedicine. Nat Rev Mater (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-026-00932-4

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