Biomedical applications of the peptide decorated gold nanoparticles

Abstract

Currently, peptide-nanoparticle (NP) conjugates have been demonstrated to be efficient and powerful tools for the treatment and the diagnosis of various diseases as well as in the bioimaging application. Several bioconjugation strategies have been adopted to formulate the peptide-NP conjugates. In this review, we discuss the exciting applications of peptide-gold (Au) NP conjugates in the area of drug delivery, targeting, cancer therapy, brain diseases, vaccines, immune modulation, biosensor, colorimetric detection of heavy metals, and bio-labeling in vitro and in vivo models. Within this framework, various approaches such as radiotherapy, photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy and chemo-photothermal therapy have been demonstrated for the treatment of several diseases. Moreover, we highlight how the morphology, size, density of peptide and the protein corona influence the biological activity, biodistribution and biological fate of peptide-AuNP conjugates. In the end, we discuss the future outlook and the challenges being faced in the clinical translation of the peptide-AuNP conjugates. Overall, this review emphasizes that the peptide-AuNP conjugates might be used as potential theranostic agents for the treatment of life-threatening diseases in an economical fashion in the future.

Keywords:

• Peptide-NP conjugates
• cellular internalization
• cancer therapy
• immune response
• blood brain barrier
• antimicrobial NPs
• gene delivery
• stealth NPs

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

AR would like to thank the investigator program (IF/00539/2015) and UIDB/04539/2020 project through Compete 2020 and FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).