ABSTRACT
Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are generally recognized as safe food-grade microorganisms and are widely used in food production, preservation, and as probiotics to promote human health. Given the need to develop effective drug delivery strategies, LAB have become attractive live vehicles for the oral, intranasal and vaginal delivery of therapeutic molecules. Being live and safe organisms, LAB are able to directly produce and deliver target proteins for therapeutic purpose, which remarkably reduces the cost for drug production. To date, LAB have been used to deliver a variety of functional proteins to mucosal tissues for the treatment of various diseases. This review summarized the development and application of LAB as mucosal delivery vectors in the last 20 years to provide references for future clinical research.