ENCAPSULATED NANOPARTICLES AS VACCINES

摘要

Nanomedicine provides a promising approach to fundamental issues and challenges in medicine especially in the domain of drug delivery and therapeutic proteins for various diseases and treatment of tumors. Nanoparticles are engineered to enable detection of cause of a disease at the cellular level while minimizing damage toward healthy cells. As most viruses and bacteria infect human body through the mucosal surface, a long duration and controllable drug delivery is one of the particular interests in medical researchers' community to improve the current treatment for patients. Although there are vaccines available for infectious disease such as influenza, measles, malaria, or herpes simplex, which attack mucosal membranes in human body, the vaccine antigens are often flushed away before they can be delivered to the cells that will provoke the immune response. While vaccines can also be delivered to the lungs via aerosol sprays, the above mentioned issues prevail even in this method, thus reducing the effectiveness of treatment for infectious disease or respiratory viruses.