**Author details**

*Surfactants and Detergents*

**4. Conclusions**

approaches in medicine.

**Acknowledgements**

**Conflict of interest**

ment of cancer and many other diseases.

delivery and as antimicrobial assemblies.

Tecnológico grant number 302352/2014-7.

The author declares no conflict of interest.

vessels through the endothelial cell junctions. Hence, these junctions might act as a molecular sieve and could prevent large particles from entering freely into the afferent lymphatics [89]. In the interstitial space, DC that captured large particles would carry them into the lymphatics. In addition, large particles would remain more tightly trapped in the interstitial space before entering the lymphatics. Their prolonged residence in the interstitium would increase the probability of phagocytosis. The role of NP charge was reviewed [90] and the boosting of cationic NPs for generating antigen-specific CD4(+) T cell proliferation was demonstrated [91].

The plethora of biomolecules that can be combined with polymers enables the design of new types of polymer-based NPs and interfaces, for example antimicrobial coatings from hybrid lipid polymer NPs [80, 83], possibly useful in medical devices, which will hopefully provide innovative preventive and therapeutic

Future generations of biomimetic systems will involve more complex compositions and combinations, leading to insights into fighting pathological conditions. Future developments in biomimetic assemblies including polymers will certainly improve and expand biomedical applications and significantly advance the treat-

Nowadays lipid polymer, positively charged, biomimetic NPs are available over a range of sizes for vaccines design and drug delivery. Biomimetic lipid polymer NPs were first described by our group in the nineties [7–9, 14–16, 92]. The last decades witnessed significant extensions in our repertoire so that lipid-polymer and polymer-lipid dispersions or coatings, nanosized bilayer fragments, bilayer-covered polymeric particles, and layer-by-layer lipid polymer assemblies, most of them cationic, found novel applications as adjuvants for vaccines, as carriers for drug

This work was supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e

**64**

Ana Maria Carmona-Ribeiro Departamento de Bioquímica, Biocolloids Laboratory, Instituto de Química, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

\*Address all correspondence to: amcr@usp.br

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