title: Virus-like particles as drug delivery vectors.
abstract: Virus-like particles (VLPs) assemble spontaneously during the viral cycle or in heterologous systems during expression of viral structural protein. Depending on the complexity of the VLPs, they can be obtained by expression in prokaryotic or eukaryotic expression system from the suitable recombinant vectors, or formed in cell-free conditions. Moreover, they can be built from proteins of a single virus, or can present the proteins or peptides derived from a virus or cell on a platform derived from any other single virus, thus forming chimeric VLPs. VLPs are best known for their immunogenic properties, but the versatility of VLPs allows a wide variety of applications. They are lately in the centre of investigations in vaccinology, drug delivery and gene therapy. This review focuses on utilization of VLPs for drug delivery.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Michał
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zdanowicz
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland; and Therex, TIMC-IMAG, CNRS UMR 5525, UJF, Domaine de la Merci, 38700 La Tronche, France.
authors.forename: Jadwiga
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chroboczek
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D006801:Humans; D014771:Virion