Towards intracellular delivery of peptides.

In view of our more comprehensive understanding with respect to intracellular pathways and their regulation, a vast number of interesting drug targets appear to be in a space that can be addressed neither by small molecules nor by biologics. Especially, interference with intracellular protein-protein interactions, if successful, seems to offer considerable opportunities to expand the application of peptides as therapeutics, in particular in the field of oncology. This review focuses on requirements for the development of peptide therapeutics aiming at intracellular targets. In addition, an outlook for developments in this field based on recent examples for peptides active in cellular assays, highlighting key requirement to assess permeability, is provided.