Dr. Heebeom Koo^1,‡, Sangmin Lee^2,‡, Jin Hee Na², Dr. Sun Hwa Kim¹, Dr. Sei Kwang Hahn³, Dr. Kuiwon Choi¹, Dr. Ick Chan Kwon¹, Dr. Seo Young Jeong², Dr. Kwangmeyung Kim^1,*

¹ Center for Theragnosis, Biomedical Research Institute, Ko-rea Institute of Science and Technology, 39-1 Hawolgok-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 136-791 (Korea)
² Department of Life and Nanopharmaceutical Science, Kyung Hee University (Korea)
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pohang, University of Science and Technology (Korea)

^‡ These authors contributed equally to this work.

^*To whom correspondence may be addressed.

^† This study was funded by the Global Research Laboratory (GRL) Project, the Fusion Technology Project (2009-0081876), and the Intramural Research Program (Theragnosis) of KIST.

Right on target: An in vivo tumor-targeting strategy using nanoparticles has been developed. An unnatural sialic acid (green, see scheme) with azide groups is artificially generated on the target site by metabolic glycoengineering. These groups then effectively enhance the accumulation of nanoparticles in the target tumor site by an in vivo bioorthogonal copper-free click reaction.

Keywords: click chemistry; drug delivery; metabolic glycoengineering; nanoparticle; tumor targeting