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.