The direct transfer approach for transcellular drug delivery

Abstract

A promising paradigm for drug administration that has garnered increasing attention in recent years is the direct transfer (DT) of nanoparticles for transcellular drug delivery. DT requires direct cell-cell contact and facilitates unidirectional and bidirectional matter exchange between neighboring cells. Consequently, DT enables fast and deep penetration of drugs into the targeted tissues. This comprehensive review discusses the direct transfer concept, which can be delineated into the following three distinct modalities: membrane contact-direct transfer, gap junction-mediated direct transfer (GJ-DT), and tunneling nanotubes-mediated direct transfer (TNTs-DT). Further, the intercellular structures for each modality of direct transfer and their respective merits and demerits are summarized. The review also discusses the recent progress on the drugs or drug delivery systems that could activate DT.

Keywords:

• Direct transfer
• cell membrane
• gap junctions
• tunneling nanotubes
• nanoparticle

Author contributions

WYF, XFY and SZF writing-original draft preparation; WYF and XFY drawing the Figures and Tables; WH, ZP and ZQ writing-review and editing; WYF, WH and ZP was responsible for the conception and design of the data; WYF, SZF was responsible for the analysis and interpretation of research data. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data is contained within the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Science and Technology Department Public Welfare Technology Research Program [Grant No. LGF19H160025], Zhejiang Provincial Science and Technology Department Public Welfare Technology Research Program [Grant No. LBY21H050001], Zhejiang Provincial Health Department Project [Grant No. 2023KY049].