Drug Delivery: Receptor‐Specific Delivery of Protein Antigen to Dendritic Cells by a Nanoemulsion Formed Using Top‐Down Non‐Covalent Click Self‐Assembly (Small 22/2013)

A new approach to the bottomup self-assembly of drug delivery nanoemulsions is presented on page 3736 by A. P. J. Middelberg and co-workers. The method is based on the interfacial mixing of biosurfactant protein and closely-related biosurfactant peptide. Functional elements such as immune-evading PEG or a targeting antibody can be conjugated to DAMP4 using known approaches. Simple topdown sequential addition of conjugated DAMP4 to a nanoemulsion stabilized by peptide surfactant AM1 leads to selfassembly of the functional element at the emulsion interface. The resulting nanoemulsion can package protein antigen and deliver it in a targeted fashion to a receptor-selected subpopulation of cells.