Bacteriophage Fusion Peptides Based Targeted Delivery of Therapeutics to Cancer Cells

Abstract

A very paramount strategy for effective therapeutic management of tumors is the selective delivery of cancer therapeutic to the site of the malady employing the concept of targeted delivery. Although, a pleothora of ligands have been developed for targeting therapeutics to the site of the disease, only a few have been successfully used because of the need of their conjugation to therapeutic nanocarriers. A promising approach is harnessing bacteriophages displaying fusion peptides on all their major coat proteins (landscape phages) for targeting therapeutic-loaded nanocarriers to breast and prostate cancer cells. Screening of multibillion landscape phage has resulted in generation of peptide ligands targeting cancer-specific receptors. Also, spontaneous insertion of isolated phage proteins into therapeutic loaded nanocarriers such as liposomes can enhance their cancer-specific cytotoxicity and exclude the need for complex bioconjugations and derivitization procedures required for targeting. Various breast cancer, prostate cancer and metastatic prostate cancer cells specific landscape phage peptides have been generated by screening landscape phage libraries. These cancer specific-landscape phage clones and their peptides are promising platforms for various applications such targeted drug and gene delivery, cancer cell receptor identification and phage-like particles for gene therapy. As such, these applications are described in this review.

Keywords: Bacteriophage. Fusion peptides. Targeted delivery. Cancer. Therapeutics