A newly developed 'GPS nanoparticle' injected intravenously can home in on cancer cells to deliver a genetic punch to the protein implicated in tumor growth and spread, according to researchers from Penn State.
Mar 11 2024Penn State A newly developed "GPS nanoparticle" injected intravenously can home in on cancer cells to deliver a genetic punch to the protein implicated in tumor growth and spread, according to researchers from Penn State. They tested their approach in human cell lines and in mice to effectively knock down a cancer-causing gene, reporting that the technique may potentially offer a more precise and effective treatment for notoriously hard-to-treat basal-like breast cancers.
Dipanjan Pan, corresponding author, the Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of nuclear engineering and of materials science and engineering at Penn State The team fabricated a Trojan horse nanoparticle, disguising it with specially designed fatty molecules that look like naturally occurring lipids and packing it full of CRISPR-Cas9 molecules. These molecules can target the genetic material of a cell, identify a particular gene and knock it down, or render it ineffective. In this case, the system targeted human forkhead box c1 , which is involved in instigating metastasis.
Related Stories"No one has ever attempted to target a basal-like breast like cancer cell with context-responsive delivery system that can genetically knockdown the gene of interest," Pan said. "We're the first to show that it can be done."