The Use of Viruses in Biomedical Nanotechnology

Using viruses as nanomedicines

“…By making use of the reactive lysine, cysteine, aspartic acid and glutamic acid groups, the outer surface of the virus capsid can be made accessible to both genetic engineering and chemical modification strategies such as N-hydroxysuccinimide coupling, Michael addition to maleimides and carbodiimide activation (Steinmetz, 2010). This allows molecular cargo or prosthetic groups such as aptamers, proteins, antibodies, carbohydrates, fluorescent dyes and drugs to be functionalized and has been widely employed for applications in cell imaging and targeting (Douglas and Young, 2006;Caruthers et al, 2007;Grasso and Santi, 2010;Koudelka and Manchester, 2010;Steinmetz, 2010;Yildiz et al, 2011;Ma et al, 2012). Although different strategies for controlled functionalization and encapsulation have been explored extensively, significant challenges still remain, as virus cages are highly sensitive to structural and genetic mutations, which can easily interfere with the small interactions responsible for cage assembly.…”

Construction and Crystal Structure of Recombinant STNV Capsids

“…In addition, VLPs are rapidly finding applications as scaffolds in nanoparticle biotechnology, as they can be very stable and allow chemical modification to attach specific molecules such as fluorescent labels or metal clusters. 13 The T = 1 plant satellite viruses could provide a useful additional class of VLPs, especially given their small sizes. We sought, therefore, to produce a recombinant expression system for STNV in Escherichia coli.…”

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“…By making use of the reactive lysine, cysteine, aspartic acid and glutamic acid groups, the outer surface of the virus capsid can be made accessible to both genetic engineering and chemical modification strategies such as N-hydroxysuccinimide coupling, Michael addition to maleimides and carbodiimide activation (Steinmetz, 2010). This allows molecular cargo or prosthetic groups such as aptamers, proteins, antibodies, carbohydrates, fluorescent dyes and drugs to be functionalized and has been widely employed for applications in cell imaging and targeting (Douglas and Young, 2006;Caruthers et al, 2007;Grasso and Santi, 2010;Koudelka and Manchester, 2010;Steinmetz, 2010;Yildiz et al, 2011;Ma et al, 2012). Although different strategies for controlled functionalization and encapsulation have been explored extensively, significant challenges still remain, as virus cages are highly sensitive to structural and genetic mutations, which can easily interfere with the small interactions responsible for cage assembly.…”