Frontiers in Virology · Published 2026-05-25 · DOI 10.3389/fviro.2026.1833007
Stefania Brandao-Araiza, Carlos Medrano-Villagómez, Pedro Gama, Mary Paz Ramos-Romero, Rafael Vazquez-Duhalt
IntroductionVirus-like particles (VLPs) are promising nanoplatforms for the targeted delivery of drugs and other therapeutic agents for a variety of diseases. Among the strategies in which VLPs offer an advantage is Enzyme Replacement Therapy, which aims to exogenously administer an enzyme deficient or absent in the human body that is responsible for a disease. An example of such a disease is acatalasemia, in which catalase activity in erythrocytes is low or absent.MethodologyTherefore, in this work, we present the synthesis and characterization of nanoreactors with catalase activity (VLP-Cat), which had an average size of 30 nm and remarkable catalytic activity. We also demonstrate the successful functionalization of the viral nanoparticles with the ERY1 peptide, which is complementary to the GYPA1 protein present in the erythrocyte membrane.ResultsUsing flow cytometry, we quantified targeting, observing a 3-fold increase in the positive population from 3% to 13% relative to the control.ConclusionWe therefore demonstrated that this strategy is effective for specifically targeting catalytic nanoreactors (VLP-Cat) to the erythrocytes.
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Brandao-Araiza, S., Medrano-Villagómez, C., Gama, P., et al. (2026). Targeted virus-based catalase nanoreactors for potential acatalasemia treatment. Frontiers in Virology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fviro.2026.1833007