Biomimetic particles in drug and vaccine delivery

Over the last two decades, lipid supramolecular association to particles has been systematically studied on latex, silica or drug particles over a range of experimental conditions in order to achieve optimal bilayer deposition onto particles. The difficult step of vesicle disruption, especially for bilayers in the rigid gel state, was circumvented by using previously disrupted charged vesicles, namely, charged bilayer fragments or disks. Thereby, under appropriate conditions of the intervening medium, bilayer fragments coalesced around particles. In this mini-review, some applications of biomimetic particles in drug and vaccine delivery are discussed such as: encapsulation of hydrophobic drug particles, isolation and reconstitution of cell receptor function, presentation of antigens to the immunological system or highly effective antimicrobial action of positively charged bilayer disks by themselves or upon coverage of hydrophobic antimicrobial drug particles with the cationic bilayer fragments. In summary, a myriad of novel applications for spherical or discoidal biomimetic particles can be anticipated from the proofs-of-concept discussed in this work.