Carbohydrate polymersJun 1, 2024

β-Glucan as a promising immune cell-targeting drug delivery system: Advantages, uses, and future possibilities

mRNA Technology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Apr 3, 2026

Abstract

β-glucans are recognized as promising carriers for drug delivery due to their unique structure and immunocompetence.

Three types of β-glucans are highlighted: yeast β-glucan, Schizophyllan, and curdlan.
These β-glucans have aided in delivering a range of therapeutics, including proteins, peptides, nucleic acids, and small molecular drugs.
The review discusses various loading strategies that enhance the delivery of therapeutics to target cells or organs.
Challenges in the development of β-glucan based delivery systems are outlined, along with potential future directions.

Simplified

Drug delivery technologies that could convert promising therapeutics into successful therapies have been under broad research for many years. Recently, β-glucans, natural-occurring polysaccharides extracted from many organism species such as yeast, fungi and bacteria, have attracted increasing attention to serve as drug delivery carriers. With their unique structure and innate immunocompetence, β-glucans are considered as promising carriers for targeting delivery especially when applied in the vaccine construction and oral administration of therapeutic agents. In this review, we focus on three types of β-glucans applied in the drug delivery system including yeast β-glucan, Schizophyllan and curdlan, highlighting the benefits of β-glucan based delivery system. We summarize how β-glucans as delivery vehicles have aided various therapeutics ranging from macromolecules including proteins, peptides and nucleic acids to small molecular drugs to reach desired cells or organs in terms of loading strategies. We also outline the challenges and future directions for developing the next generation of β-glucan based delivery systems.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View Full Text ↗

Funding

Competing interests

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

PubMed

β-Glucan as a promising immune cell-targeting drug delivery system: Advantages, uses, and future possibilities

Abstract

Full Text

Funding

Competing interests

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

What Lands in Your Inbox Each Week:

Recent issues from the mrna technology brief

Abstract

Full Text

Funding

Competing interests

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

What Lands in Your Inbox Each Week:

Recent issues from the mrna technology brief