Virus- and extracellular vesicle-inspired nanomedicine lessons learned from nature

Abstract

Nanoparticles are nanosized compartments that can contain a diverse set of cargo. In the field of nano-medicine, much research is being performed on targeted drug-delivery systems, where nanoparticles are used for targeted delivery of therapeutics. Synthetic nanoparticles show promising results, however, many complications arise concerning biocompatibility, immunogenicity and toxicity among others. Biological nanoparticles, such as virus-inspired particles and particles influenced by extracellular vesicles, could provide us with new delivery systems that are mostly biologically compatible, and have a reduced toxicity. Moreover, the study of viruses and extracellular vesicles could provide us with more insights that could be incorporated into current biologically inspired nanosystems.