Emerging Applications of Multifunctional Elastin-Like Recombinamers

Abstract

Elastin-like recombinamers have grown in popularity in the field of protein-inspired biomimetic materials and have found widespread use in biomedical applications. Modern genetic-engineering techniques have allowed the design of multifunctional materials with an extraordinary control over their architecture and physicochemical properties, such as stimuli-responsiveness, monodispersity, biocompatibility or self-assembly, amongst others. Indeed, these materials are playing an increasingly important role in a diverse range of applications, such as drug delivery, tissue engineering and ‘smart’ systems. Herein, we review some of the most interesting examples of recent advances and progressive applications of elastin-like recombinamers in biomaterial and nano-engineering sciences in recent years.

Keywords::

• drug delivery
• elastin-like recombinamers
• nanodevices
• protein purification
• surface engineering
• tissue engineering

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors acknowledge financial support through the European Regional Development Fund from the EU, from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación – Inoicio (MICINN; projects MAT 2007-66275-C02-01, MAT 2007-61604, MAT 2009-14195-C03-03 and PSE-300100-2006-2001), the Junta de Castilla y León (JCyL; projects VA034A09 and VA030A08), the El Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina (project CB06-01-0003), the JCyL and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III under the ‘Network Center of Regenerative Medicine and Cellular Therapy of Castilla and León‘. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge financial support through the European Regional Development Fund from the EU, from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación – Inoicio (MICINN; projects MAT 2007-66275-C02-01, MAT 2007-61604, MAT 2009-14195-C03-03 and PSE-300100-2006-2001), the Junta de Castilla y León (JCyL; projects VA034A09 and VA030A08), the El Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina (project CB06-01-0003), the JCyL and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III under the ‘Network Center of Regenerative Medicine and Cellular Therapy of Castilla and León‘. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.