Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 15, Issue 3, 2014

In recent years biomacromolecular drugs including proteins and nucleic acids have been emerging among the most promising therapeutics and globally recognized as one of the most cutting-edge areas of drug research. However, the nature of strong hydrophilicity and high molecular weight creates a formidable barrier for the biomacromolecules to diffuse through the cell membrane. Therefore, along with rapid development Read More

A major thrust in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries is to develop diagnostic and therapeutic tools that have significantly improved selectivity and specificity compared to the current state-of-the-art. This has driven much of the effort to look at molecules and materials that are significantly larger than the traditional small molecule agents. Due to size restrictions, however, many of these materials are unable to p Read More

Therapeutics are restricted from cellular internalization due to the biological barrier formed by the cell membrane. Especially for therapeutics with high molecular weight, strategies are required to enable delivery to intracellular targets. Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) represent a powerful tool to mediate the entry of large cargos such as proteins, siRNA and nanoparticles. The high diversity of CPPs is the prerequisite to use this Read More

Liposomes are widely used as drug delivery systems and several liposome-based nanomedicines have been approved for clinical use. Cell penetrating peptides (CPPs) have been decorated onto nanoparticulated vesicle such as liposomes to further improve the intracellular delivery efficiency. However, the poor selectivity of CPPs hindered their application, especially in the in vivo application. To resolve this issue, seve Read More

The existence of blood-brain barrier (BBB) represents the most formidable challenge for drug delivery to the central nervous system (CNS). Modern breakthrough in biology offers multiple choices for overcoming this barrier but yields modest outcomes for clinical application due to various problems such as safety concerns, insufficient delivery efficiency and poor penetration. Cell penetrating peptides (CPPs) possessing pow Read More

Biomacromolecules play an important role in the treatment of many diseases, but their topical application has been limited by their poor cell membrane permeability. Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) have been investigated over the past few decades as a potential strategy to overcome this challenge. CPPs can effectively mediate the cellular uptake of poorly internalized biomacromolecules without unfavorable side effect Read More

A variety of methods including penetrating enhancers, enzyme inhibitors, as well as cargo mediated drug delivery have been explored to improve the intolerance of parenteral administrated insulin, but little success has been achieved so far. Under this background, cell penetrating peptides (CPPs), with their ability to enhance transport efficiency of macromolecular drugs have been demonstrated to be able to increase insulin Read More

The poor permeability of cellular membrane is one of the principal hurdles of most drug administrations including vaccine system, consequently impairing drug efficiency. In order to address this natural barrier, cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) have been developed to facilitate molecular cargos to enter cells. CPPs, generally short peptides with 5-30 amino acids, can be classified in to cationic, amphipathic and hydrophobic Read More

Cellular and nuclear delivery of biomolecules is limited by low membrane permeability. Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) can be covalently linked to cargos to improve cellular internalization. Our work indicates that arginine-rich CPPs are also able to interact with a variety of cargos, including DNA, RNA, proteins and nanomaterials, in a noncovalent manner and subsequently effect their delivery into cells. The advantages of no Read More

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS). The exact pathomechanism is unknown, but an aberrant immune response against CNS antigens, leading to inflammation in brain and spinal cord followed by demyelination, axonal damage and scar formation, seems to play a major role. Later in the disease course, inflammation decreases, while neurodegeneration proceeds. Approxi Read More