Emerging Trends in the Development of Plant Virus-Based Nanoparticles and Their Biomedical Applications

Abstract Viral nanobiotechnology is an emerging and fascinating field, dealing with the use of virus-based nanoparticles as templates and/or building blocks to display novel molecular moieties with specific properties for a wide range of applications in biology, medicine, and materials science. Viral nanoparticles (VNPs) and virus like particles (VLPs) are naturally occurring highly organized, programmable nanoassemblies that provide excellent platforms for nanoscale fabrication due to their unique physical and chemical properties. Plant virus-based nanoparticles (PVNs-VNPs and VLPs derived from plant viruses) have been explored for several years either to express subunit vaccines or as epitope presentation systems. In the recent times, these PVNs are attracting the attention of researchers and clinicians due to their several attractive features such as size range (nanometer), relative structural stability, high degree of symmetry, polyvalency, monodispersity, noninfectious and nonhazardous nature when injected to mammals, low cost of production, and biocompatibility. VNPs and VLPs can readily be engineered chemically and genetically to carry targeting ligands, therapeutic antibodies, and imaging agents and drugs on their exterior and interior surfaces. This review aims to summarize important plant virus-based nanomaterials (icosahedral and helical shaped) that have been developed for imaging, drug delivery, and therapeutic applications.