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Fig. 3 | Molecular Cancer

Fig. 3

From: Delivery of cancer therapies by synthetic and bio-inspired nanovectors

Fig. 3

Biological and bio-inspired nanovectors for cancer therapy. These nanovectors have been derived from different types of organisms and exhibit high biocompatibility and extensive engineering possibilities. Extracellular vesicles derive from eukaryotic cell membranes and naturally transport different types of biomolecules (e.g. proteins, RNA). Bacterial minicells are achromosomal 400-nanometer vesicles that can be generated by genetic engineering of bacteria and have been recently used to vectorize various types of therapeutic molecules. Virus-like particles are basically viruses (e.g. bacteriophages, plant viruses, eukaryotic viruses) stripped of their replicative capacity; they exist as naked or enveloped capsids and sometimes require a non-replicative template genome for their assembly. On the contrary, oncolytic viruses are tumor-specific, live-replicating viruses with intrinsic cytotoxic and immunoactivating properties; they can equally be naked or enveloped and may be modified by genetic engineering to transport therapeutic transgenes that will be expressed exclusively by infected malignant cells

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