Virus-derived materials: bury the hatchet with old foes

Although enormous attempts are being made to develop synthetic materials for biomedical applications, more and more attention has been paid to bioderived materials due to their natural properties, including mammalian cells, bacteria, and viruses. Attributed to their symmetrical, monodisperse, and polyvalent architectures, viruses present remarkable flexibility in functionalization for biomedical applications. In this review, modification strategies including bioconjugation chemistry, encapsulation, mineralization and genetic engineering, and several related methods for construction of virus-derived materials are introduced. Through rational design, virus-derived materials show great potential in cargo delivery, imaging and therapy. Particularly, virus-derived materials can serve as versatile platforms for immune modulation via various pathways. However, safety concerns of viruses and their immunogenicity are major obstacles for virus-derived materials to be exploited in critical clinical applications, which need to be addressed urgently.