Towards Lasting Therapeutic Manufactories that Operate Inside the Body

Gene therapies involve delivering instructions into cells to ensure that specific proteins are manufactured, either temporarily or permanently. This is effectively a hijacking or programming of cellular mechanisms. There is another approach, which is to deliver suitable DNA machinery into the body, capable of manufacturing the desired proteins outside cells. This isn't helpful for all types of protein, but in many cases it is. That machinery needs protection, however: naked, it would be quickly removed by the immune system or otherwise broken down. One possibility is to employ engineered bacteria, which removes the need to introduce changes into a patient's cells, but adds a sizable set of other complications. Another approach is to build a suitable structure from scratch, such as a membrane that will not alert the immune system, containing a carefully limited set of DNA machinery that will turn out the desired proteins for a lengthy period of time, but is incapable of any other activity. These constructs would in many ways resemble extracellular vesicles more than cells, and the research community has been capable of building such things for a few years now. Researchers have successfully treated a cancerous tumor using a "nanofactory" - a synthetic cell that produces anti-cancer proteins within the tumor tissue. The research combines synthetic biology, to artificially produce proteins, and targeted drug delivery, to direct the synthetic cell to abnormal tissues. The...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs