Material-Assisted Engineering of Organelles for Biomedical Applications

Organelles play significant roles in mediating communication between and within cells. Furthermore, organelle failure would affect cellular homeostasis and result in a variety of pathophysiologies, such as cancer, metabolic, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative illness. Since healthy and functional organelles with natural biological functions play important roles in the regulation and recovery of defective cells, exosomes, an extracellular organelle, have been used as viable natural vehicles for drug loading and delivery by using physical and chemical engineering techniques. With the development of synthetic chemistry, materials, and nanotechnology, material-assisted engineering of intracellular organelles has received much research interest. In this Review, we summarize four different strategies for isolated intracellular organelle engineering, including electrostatic interaction, hydrophobic interaction, covalent conjugation, and lipid fusion to highlight how man-made and natural materials could be used to modify organelles and make them more powerful for various applications. We expect this Review could encourage further development in organelle painting techniques, and their compatibility with cell biology would result in novel living materials for efficient theragnostic applications.