Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Natural Functional Molecule Chemistry of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Northwest University, Xi'an, 710069, PR China.
Nanoscale. 2012 Jan 21;4(2):360-8. doi: 10.1039/c1nr11297j. Epub 2011 Dec 2.
Engineered nanoparticles (NPs) play an increasingly important role in biomedical sciences and in nanomedicine. Yet, in spite of significant advances, it remains difficult to construct drug-loaded NPs with precisely defined therapeutic effects, in terms of release time and spatial targeting. The body is a highly complex system that imposes multiple physiological and cellular barriers to foreign objects. Upon injection in the blood stream or following oral administation, NPs have to bypass numerous barriers prior to reaching their intended target. A particularly successful design strategy consists in masking the NP to the biological environment by covering it with an outer surface mimicking the composition and functionality of the cell's external membrane. This review describes this biomimetic approach. First, we outline key features of the composition and function of the cell membrane. Then, we present recent developments in the fabrication of molecules that mimic biomolecules present on the cell membrane, such as proteins, peptides, and carbohydrates. We present effective strategies to link such bioactive molecules to the NPs surface and we highlight the power of this approach by presenting some exciting examples of biomimetically engineered NPs useful for multimodal diagnostics and for target-specific drug/gene delivery applications. Finally, critical directions for future research and applications of biomimetic NPs are suggested to the readers.
工程纳米颗粒（NPs）在生物医学科学和纳米医学中发挥着越来越重要的作用。然而，尽管取得了重大进展，但仍然难以构建具有精确定义的治疗效果的载药 NPs，无论是在释放时间还是空间靶向方面。人体是一个高度复杂的系统，对外来物体施加了多种生理和细胞屏障。在注入血流或口服后，NPs 必须在到达其预期目标之前克服许多障碍。一种特别成功的设计策略是通过用模仿细胞膜组成和功能的外表面覆盖 NP 来使其对生物环境隐身。这篇综述描述了这种仿生方法。首先，我们概述了细胞膜的组成和功能的关键特征。然后，我们介绍了最近在制造模仿细胞膜上存在的生物分子（如蛋白质、肽和碳水化合物）的分子方面的进展。我们提出了将这些生物活性分子连接到 NPs 表面的有效策略，并通过介绍一些用于多模态诊断和针对特定目标的药物/基因递送应用的仿生工程 NPs 的令人兴奋的例子，突出了这种方法的强大之处。最后，向读者提出了对仿生 NPs 未来研究和应用的关键方向。
