Protein-based biomaterials for combating viral infections: Current status and future prospects for development

Abstract

The outbreak of viral infections are serious threat to human life and health. However, there remains to be a lack of effective treatments and prophylactic measures against some viral infections. Additionally, there are numerous challenges in developing vaccines and antiviral drugs (e.g., antibodies and protein inhibitors), such as low immunogenicity of vaccines, difficulties in storing vaccines, instability and easy degradation of protein drugs, and lack of drug selectivity. Protein-based biomaterials can interact with antiviral drugs or vaccines to achieve synergistic or enhanced effects, making them a promising antiviral tool with many advantages. Silk fibroin has the potential to stabilize liquid vaccines at room temperature. Elastin-like polypeptide modification can improve the stability and yield of virus-neutralizing antibodies. Drugs in combination with β-casein or serum albumin (SA) has good prospects in treating human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections. Moreover, the greatest value of SA as a protein-based antiviral material lies in its ability to target the liver and macrophages. In the future, combination with SA (direct conjugation or encapsulation with drugs) may be a better treatment strategy for viral hepatitis and HIV infections because it leads to fewer adverse reactions. In addition, self-assembling protein nanoparticles (SApNPs) are found to improve vaccine immunogenicity. The combination of multiple viral immunogens and multiple SApNPs produces different promising vaccine candidates, thus highlighting the value of SApNPs. This review aimed to discuss the current status and future prospects for the development of protein-based biomaterials to combat viral infections.

Keywords

• Viral infections
• Protein-based biomaterials
• Antiviral drugs
• Vaccines