Nanobionics: From plant empowering to the infectious disease treatment

Abstract

Infectious diseases (ID) are serious threats against the global health and socio-economic conditions. Vaccination usually plays a key role in disease prevention, however, insufficient efficiency or immunogenicity may be quite challenging. Using the advanced vectors for delivery of vaccines with suitable efficiency, safety, and immune-modulatory activity, and tunable characteristics could be helpful, but there are no systematic reviews confirming the capabilities of the vaccine delivery systems for covering various types of pathogens. Furthermore, high rates of the infections, transmission, and fatal ratio and diversity of the pathogens and infection mechanisms may negatively influence vaccine effectiveness. The absence of highly-effective antibiotics against the resistant strains of bacteria and longevity of antibiotic testing have provoked increasing needs towards the application of more accurate and specific theranostic strategies including the nanotechnology-based ones. Nanobionics which is based on the charge storage and transport in the molecular structures, could be of key value in the molecular diagnostic tests and highly-specific electro-analytical methods or devices. Such devices based on the early disease diagnostics might be of critical significance against various types of diseases. This article highlights the significance of nanobionics against ID.

Introduction

Infectious diseases (ID) particularly the epidemic ones are serious threats against the global lives and socioeconomic conditions. Inadequate immunogenicity or efficiency of vaccines against the pathogens particularly the newly-emerged ones are quite challenging. Heterogeneity of the pathogens and the mechanisms of infection as well as high transmission or mortality rates could significantly reduce vaccine effectiveness. In recent years, advanced systems or vectors have been developed for delivery of the vaccines, however, their proper efficiency, safety, or capability of covering various pathogens have remained elusive. Regarding some of the currently available antibiotics, reduced efficiency is a serious concern that might be due to the inappropriate applications, resistance occurrence, etc. Several limitations including the longevity of the antibiotic testing (~ 10–20 years) has raised increasing needs towards designing novel theranostic strategies against ID. Nanobionics based on the charge storage and transport within the molecules would be of great significance for applications as sensors or other smart materials. In the bacteria-based nanobionics, merging graphene-based nanomaterials and cyanobacteria can provide smart nanomaterials with electronic properties [1]. Bacterial nanobionics through 3-D printing facilitates organization of various species of bacteria in complicated dispositions for evaluating the environmental and spatial specifications in order to affect the behaviors of bacteria including the harmfulness or bioluminescence [1]. Since the microbial density is usually linked to the individual health, the aforementioned approach may be applied to various species of bacteria in order to control and monitor the effects of density and geometry particularly in the case of microbiota presence in the human skin, mouth, and intestine [1] indicating the significance of the bacteria-based nanobionics. According to the importance of highly-specific diagnostic and analytical approaches in the clinical settings, using nanobionic devices for early disease detection would be of critical importance against a variety of disorders. In this review, the therapeutic significance of nanobionics against ID has been highlighted.