Design Strategies and Applications of Circulating Cell-Mediated Drug Delivery Systems

Abstract

Drug delivery systems, particularly nanomaterial-based drug delivery systems, possess a tremendous amount of potential to improve diagnostic and therapeutic effects of drugs. Controlled drug delivery targeted to a specific disease is designed to significantly improve the pharmaceutical effects of drugs and reduce their side effects. Unfortunately, only a few targeted drug delivery systems can achieve high targeting efficiency after intravenous injection, even with the development of numerous surface markers and targeting modalities. Thus, alternative drug and nanomedicine targeting approaches are desired. Circulating cells, such as erythrocytes, leukocytes, and stem cells, present innate disease sensing and homing properties. Hence, using living cells as drug delivery carriers has gained increasing interest in recent years. This review highlights the recent advances in the design of cell-mediated drug delivery systems and targeting mechanisms. The approaches of drug encapsulation/conjugation to cell-carriers, cell-mediated targeting mechanisms, and the methods of controlled drug release are elaborated here. Cell-based “live” targeting and delivery could be used to facilitate a more specific, robust, and smart payload distribution for the next-generation drug delivery systems.

Enzymosomes: A Rising Effectual Tool for Targeted Drug Delivery System

“…Thus the avidin-biotin interaction is applied in Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), Immunohistochemistry (IHC), Cell-surface labelling, Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) etc. [86]. Thus, under optimum conditions Streptavidin attached to liposome result in well-characterized protein-liposome conjugate.…”

Next generation drug delivery: circulatory cells-mediated nanotherapeutic approaches

“…Nanocarriers (NCs), such as liposomes, hydrogels, nanoparticles, micelles, fibers, and dendrimers, provide several advantages in delivery applications and have been extensively applied to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of drugs [1][2][3][4]. However, the major challenges in NC applications are to transport the therapeutics to the target site without significant degradation, avoid rapid phagocytic clearance, prolonging the circulation time, insufficient targeting, and limited ability to cross biological barriers such as the blood-brain barrier [1][2][3][4].…”

“…However, the major challenges in NC applications are to transport the therapeutics to the target site without significant degradation, avoid rapid phagocytic clearance, prolonging the circulation time, insufficient targeting, and limited ability to cross biological barriers such as the blood-brain barrier [1][2][3][4]. Thus, alternative drug delivery approaches are desirable.…”

“…Thus, alternative drug delivery approaches are desirable. One emerging strategy to address the above nanotechnology challenges is to select body's own circulatory cells as drug carriers [1,[4][5][6][7][8].…”

“…Circulatory cells have received a significant interest as drug delivery vehicles because of several attractive and distinctive features arise from their unique structures, mechanical properties, and surface functionality [1,[4][5][6][7][8]. These properties include high biocompatibility (if immunologically compatible), high mobility, a longer circulation lifespan, inherent biodegradability through known clearance pathways, natural capability of cell/tissue targeting, high drug loading capacity due to their large internal volume, remarkable stability in circulation, and their ability to cross biological barriers [1,[4][5][6][7].…”