Abstract
Plants have been explored for many years as inexpensive and versatile platforms for the generation of vaccines and other biopharmaceuticals. Plant viruses have also been engineered to either express subunit vaccines or act as epitope presentation systems. Both icosahedral and helical, filamentous-shaped plant viruses have been used for these purposes. More recently, plant viruses have been utilized as nanoparticles to transport drugs and active molecules into cancer cells. The following review describes the use of both icosahedral and helical plant viruses in a variety of new functions against cancer. The review illustrates the breadth of variation among different plant virus nanoparticles and how this impacts the immune response.
Highlights
Plants as bioreactors for modern pharmaceutical products have been under investigation for many years, and these are only beginning to hit the marketplace
As plant virus nanoparticle systems improve in sophistication, they are being examined for their ability to activate the T cell response, and represent alternative immunotherapy strategies for cancer and other chronic diseases [14]
Plant viruses have found a place in the fight against cancer, by acting as ‘smart’ nanoparticles that can home in on tumor cells and deliver drugs as cargo, as well as in many cases elicits a highly localized and powerful immune response [44]
Summary
Plants as bioreactors for modern pharmaceutical products have been under investigation for many years, and these are only beginning to hit the marketplace. As plant virus nanoparticle systems improve in sophistication, they are being examined for their ability to activate the T cell response, and represent alternative immunotherapy strategies for cancer and other chronic diseases [14]. Plant viruses are frequently characterized by their icosahedral or helical morphologies; these differences offer a range of attributes which make them suitable for a variety of purposes in medicine as well as in engineering [11,12,13] Both morphologies can carry drugs or imaging reagents that are conjugated to the outer surface of the capsid protein, producing a highly regular repeating pattern on the surface of the virus particle [12]. The following review describes the incorporation of icosahedral and helical plant viruses as immunotherapy agents to assist in the battle against chronic diseases, including cancer
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