Lectin-mediated drug targeting: history and applications.

The purpose of this paper is to review the history of using lectins to target and deliver drugs to their site of action. The hour of birth of "lectinology" may be defined as the description of the agglutinating properties of ricin, by Herrmann Stillmark in 1888, however, the modern era of lectinology began almost 100 years later in 1972 with the purification of different plant lectins by Sharon and Lis. The idea to use lectins for drug delivery came in 1988 from Woodley and Naisbett, who proposed the use of tomato lectin (TL) to target the luminal surface of the small intestine. Besides the targeting to specific cells, the lectin-sugar interaction can also been used to trigger vesicular transport into or across epithelial cells. The concept of bioadhesion via lectins may be applied not only for the GI tract but also for other biological barriers like the nasal mucosa, the lung, the buccal cavity, the eye and the blood-brain barrier.