REVIEW article
Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol.
Sec. Biomaterials
This article is part of the Research TopicInsights in Biomaterials 2025 - Novel Developments, Current Challenges, and Future PerspectivesView all 6 articles
Rational Design and Preclinical Evaluation of Elastin-Like Polypeptide Micelle Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery
Provisionally accepted
- Iowa State University, Ames, United States
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Elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) micelle nanoparticles have emerged as versatile and tunable platforms for drug delivery across diseases. These bio-inspired and thermo-responsive polymers typically produced recombinantly in E.coli or yeast offer great biocompatibility, low immunogenicity, and cost-effective production. Rationally designed amphiphilic diblock ELPs, ELP-drug/polymer/protein conjugates, and ELP-nucleic acid polyplexes can self-assemble into micelle or micelle-like nanoparticles at physiological temperatures. Similar to other nanoparticle drug delivery systems, ELP micelles can load a broad range of drugs, prolong systemic circulation, and enable controlled and sustained drug release. Notably, ELP micelles provide unique advantages for delivering protein and peptide drugs, as their conjugates with ELP can be recombinantly synthesized with a 100% conjugation efficiency, eliminating the need for chemical coupling. In this review, we will discuss the design principles of ELP micelle-based drug delivery systems and summarize their recent applications in cancer therapy and vaccine development.
Keywords: biomaterial, Drug delivery, elastin-like polypeptide, Micelle, rational design
Received: 30 Oct 2025; Accepted: 04 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Wang, Tofik, Zhang and Volpe. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jing Wang
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.