Figure 2.

Schematic illustration of noncanonical self-assembly and biomedical applications of multifunctional DNA nanoflowers (NFs). (a) Rolling circle amplification (RCA) generates a large amount of elongated DNA, which provides the building blocks to self-assemble the DNA NFs; (b) A drug (Doxorubicin, Dox) is loaded into NFs, which are able to target protein tyrosine kinase 7 (PTK7)-overexpressing cells through the incorporated sgc8c aptamer. Dox is released from NFs after intracellular uptake and causes selective apoptosis. dNTP: deoxy-ribonucleoside triphosphate. Reproduced with permission from Ref. [33] Copyright 2015 Springer Nature.