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Nanotech News
DNA Nanoparticles Deliver Genes Intravenously Given that cancer is ultimately a disease caused by mutations in one or more genes within a cell, researchers have been developing methods of repairing or compensating for faulty genes involved in causing cancer. A major obstacle blocking progress in this endeavor is a lack of good technology for getting anticancer genes into cells, but work published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society provides one approach that may be useful for targeting metastatic cells and other cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream. A research team headed by Jean-Paul Behr, Ph.D., at the Louis Pasteur University of Strasbourg, France, has created a novel detergent molecule that interacts with individual DNA molecules to form a nanoparticle 32 nanometers in diameter. These nanoparticles, which are unusual in that they have no charge on their surface, are stable in blood, yet fall apart when exposed to a negatively-charged molecule found only inside cells. This molecule, phosphatidylserine, causes the nanoparticle to unravel, releasing the entrapped DNA molecule to the inside of the cell. When injected into mice, 25 percent of the neutral nanoparticles were still circulating in blood after 30 minutes. In contrast, only 2 percent of other DNA-containing formulations tested, all of which are positively charged, remained in blood after 30 minutes. The investigators also found that their new nanoparticles were not stuck to circulating blood cells, as were other nanoparticulate formulations. The researches concluded from their experiments that these neutral nanoparticles, when coupled to tumor-targeting molecules such as folic acid, could be useful in delivering anticancer genes to metastatic cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream. This work appears in a paper titled, “Monomolecular DNA nanoparticles for intravenous delivery of genes.” This paper was posted online in advance of print publication. An abstract of this paper is available at the journal’s website. |
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