Trends in Biotechnology
Volume 21, Issue 11, November 2003, Pages 465-467
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Research Focus
Delivering the vaccination mail

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2003.09.004Get rights and content

Abstract

The impact of preventative and therapeutic vaccines continues to expand in the fields of infectious disease and cancer, but their full potential is currently limited by drug-delivery challenges. Synthetic delivery systems that incorporate principles of biological design could improve vaccine efficacy significantly. A recent paper by Murthy et al. demonstrates that microgels engineered on the nano-scale and designed to degrade at the mildly acidic pH of the phagosomal compartment can enhance protein-antigen entry into the cytoplasmic major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class 1 processing pathway.

Section snippets

The biological paradigm

One of the most significant challenges in the field of drug delivery is connected to a widespread biological barrier. Biomolecular therapeutics that function inside the cell, and protein antigens that enter the MHC class 1 pathway in the cytoplasm, must cross membrane barriers at the cell membrane and/or the endosomal or lysosomal compartment level (Figure 1). For intracellular drugs using plasmid DNA, antisense oligonucleotides, RNA and proteins, efficiency is generally dependent on the

Synthetic drug-delivery systems

In the vaccine-development field, controlled-release systems represent the second wave of delivery strategies to hit the clinic (after direct-injection approaches). The biodegradable polymeric microencapsulation technology for timed protein-release was pioneered by Langer and co-workers [4], and the general approach has now been extended to several different polymer compositions and microparticle-processing techniques [4]. These microspheres can be engineered for sustained antigen release with

Future prospects

Although current synthetic systems lack the sophistication found in biology, we can find some solace in the knowledge that we are just a decade or two into the game, whereas biology has had many millions of years lead time. Synthetic drug-delivery systems have already helped people in the clinic, and this impact should expand greatly over the next decade. The movement of synthetic chemists and material scientists into the drug-delivery field should bring new control of biomaterial properties.

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