
1) Light-mediated endosomal breakage
One advance is in the development of nanoparticles (size-tunable (30-200 nm) highly monodispersed mesoporous silica nanoparticles) that can be loaded with a variety of compounds and released into the cytosol via light-mediated endosomal breakage, as illustrated in Figure 1 (Febvay et al, Nano Lett, 2010).
Figure 1: Nanoparticle cargo discharge through light-activation.

2) GALA peptide endosomal breakage
A second advance is in cytosolic drug delivery with nanoparticles using a peptide, GALA, to encourage endosomal breakage. GALA (comprised of repeating sequences of Glu-Ala-Leu-Ala) mimics the function of viral fusion protein sequences that mediate escape of virus genes from endosomes (Nakase et al, Methods Mol Biol, 2011).