Applications of Gold Nanoparticles in Nanomedicine: Recent Advances in Vaccines †

Carabineiro, Sónia Alexandra Correia

Gold nanoparticles, in general, have remarkably high surface-to-volume ratio, are biocompatible and inert, and can be easily functionalized with several molecules; thus, they can also play an important role in the vaccine field as adjuvants, reducing toxicity, enhancing immunogenic activity, and providing stability of vaccine in storage, and have great potential as carriers for the development of a great diversity of fully synthetic vaccines [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] 15, 20, 21, 26, [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] . Their shape and size can affect immunological responses in vivo and in vitro [51, [62] [63] [64] [65] . Moreover, they are able to penetrate blood vessels and tissue barriers and to be targeted to a specific cell by means of specifically functionalized molecules [59] . Moreover, gold nanoparticles can be packaged inside virus-like particles generated by heterologous expression of viral structural genes that are powerful tools in vaccine development [66] .