Peptide-based nanosystems for vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 targeting: a real opportunity for therapeutic and diagnostic agents in inflammation associated disorders

Inflammation is a phenomenon strictly connected with serious human disorders such as cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. The incidence of these pathologies has increased over the past decades and consequently the inflammatory markers have gained more and more importance in the scientific world. Among them, Vascular Cell Adhesion Molecule-1 (VCAM-1) represents one of the most interesting, as it is easy accessible on the endothelium and is upregulated at the early stages of inflammatory processes. Different studies have shown the role of VCAM-1 in the development of atherosclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, paving the way to a growing interest in diagnostics and therapeutics targeting this protein. This review reports an up-to-date series of peptide-targeted nanosystems specific for VCAM-1, proposed for the diagnosis or therapeutic treatment of different inflammatory-based pathologies. The listed approaches are described underlying the chemical aspects, the detection techniques and the in vitro and in vivo models employed. Numerous strategies have been pursued with peptide-based methods, i.e. liposomes, micelles, nanoparticles, microbubbles, quantum dots and just radiolabeled peptides. On the basis of the shown evidences, so far mainly gathered on animal models, the potential utility of VCAM-1 comes powerfully to light, suggesting in a near future a broader application of these specific nanosystems in clinical trials.