Navigating cancer therapy: Harnessing the power of peptide-drug conjugates as precision delivery vehicles

Nanostructured lipid carriers in cancer therapy: Advances in passive and active targeting strategies

Nanostructured lipid carriers (NLCs) have emerged as a promising drug delivery platform in cancer therapy, offering advantages such as enhanced drug solubility, stability, and controlled release. Recent efforts have focused on utilizing NLCs for passive and active tumor targeting to improve therapeutic outcomes. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the role of NLCs in cancer therapy, with particular emphasis on their application in passive and active targeting strategies for precision oncology. Relevant studies were selected from recent literature, focusing on NLC formulation, targeting approaches, and therapeutic applications. NLCs enhance tumor-specific drug delivery through passive targeting via the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect and active targeting via ligand-mediated mechanisms. Lymphatic-targeting NLCs enable improved drug delivery to metastatic niches, while stimuli-responsive NLCs facilitate site-specific release under tumor-associated conditions (e.g., pH, enzymatic activity, redox gradients). Advances in lipid composition, surfactant systems, and conjugation strategies significantly influence drug loading (DL), biodistribution, therapeutic efficacy, and clinical translation across various malignancies. NLCs represent a versatile and adaptable platform for precision cancer therapy. Continued optimization of formulation parameters, functionalization strategies, and clinical translation pathways is essential to fully realize their potential in targeted oncology applications.

Peptide-Drug Conjugates as Next-Generation Therapeutics: Exploring the Potential and Clinical Progress

Peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs) have emerged as a next-generation therapeutic platform, combining the target specificity of peptides with the pharmacological potency of small-molecule drugs. As an evolution beyond antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), PDCs offer distinct advantages, including enhanced cellular permeability, improved drug selectivity, and versatile design flexibility. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the fundamental components of PDCs, including homing peptide selection, linker engineering, and payload optimization, alongside strategies to address their inherent challenges, such as stability, bioactivity, and clinical translation barriers. Therapeutic applications of PDCs span oncology, infectious diseases, metabolic disorders, and emerging areas like COVID-19, with several conjugates advancing in clinical trials and achieving regulatory milestones. Innovations, including bicyclic peptides, supramolecular architectures, and novel linker technologies, are explored as promising avenues to enhance PDC design. Additionally, this review examines the clinical trajectory of PDCs, emphasizing their therapeutic potential and highlighting ongoing trials that exemplify their efficacy. By addressing limitations and leveraging emerging advancements, PDCs hold immense promise as targeted therapeutics capable of addressing complex disease states and driving progress in precision medicine.

Trends in the research and development of peptide drug conjugates: artificial intelligence aided design

Peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs) represent an emerging class of targeted therapeutic agents that consist of small molecular drugs coupled to multifunctional peptides through cleavable or non-cleavable linkers. The principal advantage of PDCs lies in their capacity to deliver drugs to diseased tissues at increased local concentrations, thereby reducing toxicity and mitigating adverse effects by limiting damage to non-diseased tissues. Despite the increasing number of PDCs being developed for various diseases, their advancements remain relatively slow due to several development constraints, which include limited available peptides and linkers, narrow therapeutic applications, and incomplete evaluation and information platforms for PDCs. Marked by the recent Nobel Prize awarded to artificial intelligence (AI) and de novo protein design for "protein design and structure prediction," AI is playing an increasingly important role in drug discovery and development. In this review, we summarize the recent developments and limitations of PDCs, highlights the potential of AI in revolutionizing the design and evaluation of PDC.

Microbial lipases: advances in production, purification, biochemical characterization, and multifaceted applications in industry and medicine

Lipases are biocatalysts of significant industrial and medical relevance, owing to their ability to hydrolyze lipid substrates and catalyze esterification reactions under mild conditions. This review provides a comprehensive overview of microbial lipases' production, purification, and biochemical properties. It explores optimized fermentation strategies to enhance enzyme yield, including using agro-industrial residues as substrates. The challenges associated with purification techniques such as ultrafiltration, chromatography, and precipitation are discussed, alongside methods to improve enzyme stability and specificity. Additionally, the review addresses the growing importance of genetic engineering approaches for improving lipase characteristics, such as activity, stability, and specificity.Additionally, this review highlights the diverse applications of microbial lipases in industries, including food, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and cosmetics. The enzyme's role in bioremediation, biodegradation, and the synthesis of bioactive compounds is analyzed, emphasizing its potential in sustainable and eco-friendly technologies. The biocatalytic properties of lipases make them ideal candidates for the green chemistry initiatives in these industries. In the biomedical domain, lipase has shown promise in drug delivery systems, anti-obesity treatments, and diagnostics.This review provides insights into the strategic development of microbes as microbial cell factories for the sustainable production of lipases, paving the way for future research and industrial innovations in enzyme technology.