Bio-Inspired Drug Delivery Systems: Lessons from Nature for Pharmaceutical Innovation

Bio-inspired drug delivery systems are a relatively new area of development in the field of pharmaceutical science that applies the principles of nature to design a new system that will improve efficacy and safety in therapy. This is a review of recent developments in bio-inspired delivery platforms and, in particular, animal-based preclinical studies. Several biomimetic nanoparticles such as cell membrane-coated, exosome-mimetrics, virus-inspired, and biomimetic polymers are critically analyzed. The areas of focus of this review include the methodology of fabrication, targeting mechanism, biodistribution studies and therapeutic studies in animal models. The major findings are that bio-inspired systems are much better in terms of drug stability, circulation time, and tissue specificity as compared to systemic toxicity reduction. Even though such results are promising, they are subject to such difficulties as scalability, reproducibility, and translational reliability. This review presents the contemporary developments, limitations, and future research directions to clinical translation.