‘Virus-like’ nanoparticle built to target tumors
August 20, 2012
Proposed mechanism of action of fusogenic protoviral nanoparticles (credit: Sergey G. Tarasova et al./PNAS)
National Cancer Institute scientists have built fully synthetic self-assembling virus-like nanoparticles that fuse with cells like real viruses, Nature News Blog reports.
Viruses are extremely effective at targeting cells and delivering proteins into them. To mimic a virus, the team used amino acids to build a molecule that resembles a known protein that spans cell membranes.
The team previously described how these proteins self-assemble into spherical nanoparticles in solution. Now the team has gone further, showing that these nanoparticles can fuse with cells via receptors.
By incorporating compounds into their nanoparticles that normally bind prostate tumor cells, their virus-mimic selectively targets these cells. They can be used to encapsulate drugs, meaning that a synthetic virus-like particle could be created to target cancer cells and then deliver a chemotherapy payload precisely to the tumor.
Comments (4)
by Starheart
This is likely to have both immense results for any treatment that aims to deliver directed cell-specific agents. And we pretty much can synthesize the payload to boot in form of specific RNA transcription inhibitors tailored to affect individual codons. Soon enough, everyone’s genome will be a part of their medical dossier. Likewise, cancers would be suppressed by sampling mutant cell DNA, identifying the mutated gene and synthesizing an inhibitor that only affects tumor cells. And with the discovery mentioned, we won’t have to engineer a retrovirus for that, instead using lab-made nanoparticles.
by J to the Dub
It’s NOT a TUMOR! :P
by Bri
I’d rather see it deliver epigenetic drugs than chemotherapy . My own feelings on cancer is that in less than ten years it will be very treatable. The rate of informational growth is getting hard to follow. Soon if you spent all your time trying to keep up, you’d still be falling behind. If we haven’t passed that point already!
by Mrs. Jo Dermody
Since my four children had an uncle and an aunt and their father die of
pancreatic cancer I always looks for anything that in the end might save
their lives. Please keep working at this.
Also people like me who have Sjogren’s always pray that something will
come along to kill the defective gene that is making our lives so
very misearble. Thank you for all your work. Jo