Atomically engineered nanozymes for immunotherapy and disease treatment

Published in the KeAi journal Nano Biomedicine and Engineering, a new review by researchers from Hainan Medical University details how atomically engineed nanozymes (AENs)are engineered to mimic natural enzymes while outperforming them in biomedical applications. These nanostructures can precisely regulate reactive oxygen species (ROS), activate immune pathways, and remodel the tumor microenvironment—killing tumors by immunotherapy.

"From radioimmunotherapy and cuproptosis to ferroptosis and pyroptosis, AENs are being harnessed to induce immunogenic cell death, activate STING pathways, and boost checkpoint blockade therapies," shares senior author Pir Muhammad. "They also show promise in antibacterial applications, wound healing, and mitigating drug-induced organ toxicity."

In particular, AENs' atomic tunability allows the design of targeted, efficient, and personalized therapeutic platforms for more effective treatments of different disease, including rheumatoid arthritis, acute pancreatitis, sepsis, Parkinson's disease , ischemic strokes, pneumonia, and Alzheimer's disease.

Nonetheless, the authors note that while AENs show promise, challenges remain in scaling synthesis, long-term biocompatibility, and precise control of catalytic activity in dynamic biological environments. Future efforts are likely to focus on intelligent nanozyme design, real-time immune monitoring, and clinical translation.

Contact author details:

Yanli Wang, Pir Muhammad, Engineering Research Center of Tropical Medicine Innovation and Transformation of Ministry of Education, International Joint Research Center of Human-machine Intelligent Collaborative for Tumor Precision Diagnosis and Treatment of Hainan Province, School of Pharmacy, Hainan Academy of Medical Sciences, Hainan Medical University, Haikou, Hainan 571199, China pir@muhn.edu.cn

Funder:

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82325030 and 52371250); Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation High-Level Talent Project (824RC512); HNMU-Research Start-up Funding (RZ2300005998); the National Key Research Development Program of China (2022YFC2305000); and Science and Technology special fund of Hainan Province (ZDYF2024SHFZ080).

Conflict of interest:

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

See the article:

Pir Muhammad, et al., Atomically engineered nanozymes (AEN): Revolutionizing catalytic immunemodulation for biomedical advances, Nano Biomedicine and Engineering, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2026, 100003, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbe.2025.100003.