Targeted Drug Delivery in Lipid-like Nanocages and Extracellular Vesicles

Abstract

The possibility of targeted drug delivery to a specific tissue, organ, or cell has opened new promising avenues in treatment development. The technology of targeted delivery aims to create multifunctional carriers that are capable of long circulation in the patients organism and possess low toxicity at the same time. The surface of modern synthetic carriers has high structural similarity to the cell membrane, which, when combined with additional modifications, also promotes the transfer of biological properties in order to penetrate physiological barriers effectively. Along with artificial nanocages, further efforts have recently been devoted to research into extracellular vesicles that could serve as natural drug delivery vehicles. This review provides a detailed description of targeted delivery systems that employ lipid and lipid-like nanocages, as well as extracellular vesicles with a high level of biocompatibility, highlighting genetically encoded drug delivery vehicles.

Reprogramming Extracellular Vesicles for Protein Therapeutics Delivery

“…They perform important functions of signal transmitting between cells, exchanging genetic information and eliminating dangerous substances from the cell [ 10 ]. EVs are capable of encapsulating various macromolecular cargoes such as proteins, nucleic acids and lipids [ 11 , 12 ]; in addition, various receptors and markers may be present on their surface. Although early works described them as cells’ by-products [ 13 ], a lot of studies report the significant role of EVs as biomarkers for a variety of human pathological conditions nowadays [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ].…”

Stem Cell-Derived Exosomes: a New Strategy of Neurodegenerative Disease Treatment

“…For example, Lamp2-RVG-modified exosomes were confirmed by several investigations to selective delivery of exosomes to the brain after intravenous injection [242,243]. Lamp2 is an EV membrane-anchored protein fused with RVG glycoprotein that is a neuron-specific peptide [244]. In the same study, Lamp2b was genetically engineered with the αv integrinspecific iRGD peptide to doxorubicin delivery into αv integrin-positive tumor tissues [245].…”

Targeting Extracellular Vesicles to Dendritic Cells and Macrophages

“…On the basis of our findings, the strategy of targeting genetically encoded extracellular vesicles to APCs may be used in the development of drugs for the correction of the immune response in patients with autoimmune, viral, and oncological diseases. Vesicles can deliver not only target proteins, but also lipids, nucleic acids, and transcription factors to cells [ 1 ]. In the future, EV-based targeted drug delivery could be used in gene therapy.…”

“…The current rapid progress in modern biomedicine is based on the development of therapeutic drugs with high selectivity and low toxicity. The design of these drugs is associated with the development of highly active therapeutic components and also with their effective delivery to certain organs, tissues, and target cells [ 1 , 2 ]. The current significant progress in targeted drug delivery has been achieved using antibody targeted therapy, darpins, and nanoparticles [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ].…”