Fig. 4
From: Delivery of cancer therapies by synthetic and bio-inspired nanovectors
Biogenesis of biological nanovectors. Biological nanovectors are either derived from prokaryotic (bacterial minicells) or eukaryotic (extracellular vesicles) cells, or from viruses (oncolytic viruses and virus-like particles). Bacterial minicells are achromosomal vesicles obtained upon genetic engineering (deletion of the Min operon) from ectopic septation of Gram-positive or Gram-negative bacteria. Extracellular vesicles are produced by all eukaryotic cells by outward budding of the plasma membrane (microvesicles) or through inward budding and exocytosis (exosomes). Regarding viruses, whereas live-attenuated oncolytic viruses carry a complete genome and thus retain a replicative capacity specific for transformed cells, virus-like-particles are only constituted of structural proteins and are consequently not competent for replication