Department of Immunology and Pathology, Central Clinical School , Monash University , Melbourne , Victoria 3004 , Australia.
Bioconjug Chem. 2018 Mar 21;29(3):657-671. doi: 10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.7b00455. Epub 2017 Sep 26.
The field of medical diagnostics and therapeutics is being revolutionized by nanotechnology, from targeted drug delivery to cancer immunotherapy. Inorganic nanoparticles are widely used, albeit problems with agglutination, cytotoxicity, free radical generation, and instability in some biological environments limits their utility. Conjugation of biomolecules such as peptides to the surface of nanoparticles can mitigate such problems, as well as confer specialized theranostic (therapeutic and/or diagnostic) properties, useful across biomedical applications such as vaccines, drug delivery, and in vivo imaging. Coating with amino acids, rather than peptides, offers further a highly cost-effective approach (due to their ease of purification and availability), but is currently an underutilized way to decrease toxicity and enhance stability. Amino acid molecules are small (<200 Da) and have both positive and negative charge groups (zwitterionic) facilitating charge-specific molecule binding. Additionally, amino acids exert by themselves some useful biological functions, with antibacterial and viability enhancing properties (for eukaryotic cells). Overall particle size, nanoparticle core, and the specific amino acid used to functionalize their surface influence their biodistribution, and their effects on host immunity. In this review, we provide for the first time an overview of this emerging field, and identify gaps in knowledge for future research.
纳米技术正在彻底改变医学诊断和治疗领域，从靶向药物输送到癌症免疫疗法。尽管无机纳米颗粒在一些生物环境中存在聚集、细胞毒性、自由基生成和不稳定性等问题，限制了其应用，但它们仍被广泛应用。将生物分子（如肽）偶联到纳米颗粒表面可以减轻这些问题，并赋予特殊的治疗和/或诊断特性，在疫苗、药物输送和体内成像等生物医学应用中非常有用。与肽相比，用氨基酸进行涂层提供了一种更具成本效益的方法（由于其易于纯化和可用性），但目前是降低毒性和增强稳定性的一种未充分利用的方法。氨基酸分子较小（<200 Da），具有正电荷和负电荷基团（两性离子），有利于特定电荷的分子结合。此外，氨基酸本身具有一些有用的生物学功能，具有抗菌和提高细胞活力的特性（对真核细胞）。总的来说，颗粒大小、纳米颗粒核心以及用于功能化其表面的特定氨基酸都会影响它们的生物分布，以及它们对宿主免疫的影响。在这篇综述中，我们首次全面概述了这一新兴领域，并确定了未来研究中的知识空白。
