Bacteria-inspired nanomedicine

Summary

This review surveys how bacterial biology and bacterial derivatives are being translated into nanomedicine. Bacteria offer more than a structural template: their motility, directional responses, immune modulation, and dynamic interactions with hosts provide functions that synthetic particles often lack. The article places recent progress in the context of increasingly sophisticated genetic engineering, which permits tighter and more tunable control over living or bacteria-derived systems. It also examines nonliving derivatives—including membrane ghosts, extracellular vesicles, spores, and toxins—that preserve selected bacterial features while offering practical distinctions from intact organisms. Across these categories, the review organizes applications spanning therapeutic payload delivery and immunotherapy for both cancer and infectious disease. Its principal synthesis is that bacterial mimicry can occur at several levels, from adopting a biological behavior to repurposing a discrete bacterial component, and that the appropriate level can be matched to a biomedical task. The significance is a broad design toolkit for creating active, interactive nanotherapeutics rather than passive carriers. Because the abstract is a high-level review summary, it does not compare efficacy or risk across platforms, describe evidence-selection methods, or resolve safety and manufacturing challenges associated with bacterial materials.