Unlocking the potential of beta-glucans: a comprehensive review from synthesis to drug delivery carrier potency

Modernization and lifestyle changes have resulted in a number of diseases, including cancer, that require complicated and thorough treatments. One of the most important therapies is the administration of antibiotics and medicines. This is known as chemotherapy for cancer, and it is a regularly utilised treatment plan in which the medications used have negative side effects. This has resulted in extensive research on materials capable of delivering pharmaceuticals to particular targets over an extended period of time. Biopolymers have often been preferred as effective drug delivery carriers. Of these, β-glucan, a natural polysaccharide, has not been extensively studied as a drug delivery carrier, despite its unique properties. This review discusses the sources, extraction techniques, structures, and characteristics of β-glucan to provide an overview. Furthermore, the different methods employed to encapsulate drugs into β-glucan and its role as an efficient drug, SiRNA and Plasmid DNA carrier have been elaborated in this article. The capacity of β-glucan-based to specifically target and alter tumour-associated macrophages, inducing an immune response ultimately resulting in tumour suppression has been elaborated. Finally, this study aims to stimulate further research on β-glucan by thoroughly describing its many characteristics and demonstrating its effectiveness as a drug delivery vehicle.

Beta-d-glucan-based drug delivery system and its potential application in targeting tumor associated macrophages

Use of polysaccharides as carriers in drug delivery system is a hot topic, especially those with specific recognition of immune cells, enabling them to be applied in targeting delivery system. β-d-glucans are naturally occurring non-digestible polysaccharides with immunomodulatory activities that have attracted increasing attention to serve as therapeutic agents or immune-adjuvants. Being able to be specifically recognized by immune cells like macrophages, β-d-glucans can be developed as promising carriers for targeting delivery with stability, biocompatibility and specificity when applied in immunotherapy. Targeting tumor associated macrophages (TAMs) is an emerging strategy for cancer immunotherapy since it exerts anti-cancer effects based on modulating body immunity in tumor microenvironment (TME). This new strategy does not require high concentration of drugs to kill cancer cells directly and lessen tumor recurrence by creating unique immune memory for malignant cells. In this review, construction strategies of polysaccharide-based drug delivery system of three types of β-d-glucan including non-yeast and yeast β-d-glucans as well as hyper-branched β-d-glucan are discussed with reference to their branching characteristics and conformation. The applications of these β-d-glucans as nano-carrier for drug delivery targeting TAMs are also discussed.

Enhanced cytokine secretion from primary macrophages due to Dectin-1 mediated uptake of CpG DNA/β-1,3-glucan complex

Unmethylated CpG sequences (CpG DNA) can induce Th1 response and thus become a potential immunotherapeutic agent. A key step in the treatment is to transport CpG DNA to its receptor TLR9 located in the endocytosis pathway of target immune cells. For the effective transport, we prepared a novel complex from a β-1,3-glucan schizophyllan (SPG) and CpG DNA, and administered the complex to murine peritoneal macrophages that had been previously activated by thioglycollate and expressed a major β-1,3-glucan receptor Dectin-1 on the cellular surface. Flow cytometric analysis and microscopic observation showed that the complex was taken up by the macrophage through Dectin-1 mediated pathway. Indeed, ELISA demonstrated that IL-12 production was increased sigmoidally with increasing SPG/CpG DNA ratio in the complexation, and reached the maximum at the SPG-rich composition. In the present work, we describe a new approach to deliver CpG DNA to immune cells by use of a β-1,3-glucan/DNA complex.