Rip It, Stitch It, Click It: A Chemist’s Guide to VLP Manipulation

Viruses are some of nature’s most ubiquitous self-assembled molecular containers. Evolutionary pressures have created some incredibly robust, thermally and enzymatically resistant containers to transport delicate genetic information safely. Virus-like particles (VLPs) are human-engineered non-infectious systems that inherit the parent virus’ ability to self-assemble under controlled conditions while being non-infectious. VLPs and plant-based viral nanoparticles are becoming increasingly popular in medicine as their self-assembly properties are exploitable for applications ranging from diagnostic tools to targeted drug delivery. Understanding the basic structure and principles underlying the assembly of higher-order structures has allowed researchers to disassemble (rip it), functionalize (click it), and reassemble (stitch it) these systems on demand. This review focuses on the current toolbox of strategies developed to manipulate these systems by ripping, stitching, and clicking to create new technologies in the biomedical space.