A brief glimpse over the horizon for type 1 diabetes nanotherapeutics

• Tunable NPs can be manufactured in a manner where drug release can be directed by external electromagnetic and acoustic energy.
• NP loading with antigens can be redundant as antigen-specificity is acquired inside the lymph nodes draining the affected organ.
• For T1DM, NPs administered into regions drained by pancreatic lymph nodes will be most effective.
• Conferral of a tolerogenic state/ability to DC may be the most effective way to activate cascades of regulatory immune cell networks.

The pace at which nanotherapeutic technology for human disease is evolving has accelerated exponentially over the past five years. Most of the technology is centered on drug delivery which, in some instances, offers tunable control of drug release. Emerging technologies have resulted in improvements in tissue and cell targeting while others are at the initial stages of pairing drug release and drug release kinetics with microenvironmental stimuli or changes in homeostasis. Nanotherapeutics has only recently been adopted for consideration as a prophylaxis/treatment approach in autoimmunity. Herein, we summarize the current state-of-the art of nanotherapeutics specifically for type 1 diabetes mellitus and offer our view over the horizon of where we envisage this modality evolving towards.