Current Progress of Virus-mimicking Nanocarriers for Drug Delivery

Abstract

Nanomedicines often involve the use of nanocarriers as a delivery system for drugs or genes for maximizing the therapeutic effect and/or minimizing the adverse effect. From drug administration to therapeutic activity, nanocarriers must evade the host's immune system, specifically and efficiently target and enter the cell, and release their payload into the cell cytoplasm by endosomal escape. These processes constitute the early infection stage of viruses. Viruses are a powerful natural nanomaterial for the efficient delivery of genetic information by sophisticated mechanisms. Over the past two decades, many virus-inspired nanocarriers have been generated to permit successful drug and gene delivery. In this review, we summarize the early infection machineries of viruses, of which the part has so far been utilized for delivery systems. Furthermore, we describe basics and applications of the bio-nanocapsule, which is a hepatitis B virus-mimicking nanoparticle harboring nearly all activities involved in the early infection machineries (i.e., stealth activity, targeting activity, cell entry activity, endosomal escaping activity).

Nanomedicine strategies to target coronavirus

“…5 ). The advantages and disadvantages of the different systems are extensively discussed elsewhere [ 13 , 22 , 66 ]. This review will mainly focus on the potential of lipid- based NPs as well as virus-like NPs for the use in CoV-targeted NP-based vaccine (NPb-V) due to the high similarity of such systems with natural viruses.…”

“…In particular the use of liposomes as nanocarriers forms a promising approach that mimic the infection profile of viruses due to their high resemblance in structure, presenting a lipid bilayer surface and in high similarities in cellular uptake [ [19] , [20] , [21] ]. Another strategy can be the use of empty virus particles themselves to function as nanocarriers for a different loading such as the use of gene therapy [ 22 , 23 ]. The combination of aforementioned drugs or newly developed therapeutics with nanocarrier systems could form a promising strategy to deliver therapeutics or vaccine antigens to target cells and thereby stop the life-cycle of CoVs or prevent disease.…”

Optically responsive delivery platforms: from the design considerations to biomedical applications

“…Viruses utilise their protein components to overcome cellular barriers. Drug delivery technologies can learn a great deal from viruses [247].…”

The VP1u of Human Parvovirus B19: A Multifunctional Capsid Protein with Biotechnological Applications

“…These processes resemble the early infection steps of viruses, which operate as powerful natural nanocarriers to efficiently deliver genetic material into target cells by complex mechanisms shaped by evolution. The targeting machinery that is engaged in the early viral infection steps can be utilized to generate virus-inspired nanocarriers as efficient drug or gene delivery vehicles [ 119 , 120 ]. In this regard, the VP1u of B19V includes many interesting features that can potentially be exploited for drug delivery and diagnostics, i.e., specific cell targeting, efficient cell entry, and endosomal escape.…”