Hijacking human proteins to better deliver anti-cancer drugs
Powerful molecules can hitch rides on a plentiful human protein and signal tumors to self-destruct, a team of Vanderbilt University engineers found.
Their research gives oncologists a better shot at overcoming the problems of drug resistance, toxicity to patients and a host of other barriers to consistently achieving successful gene therapy for cancer. It is particularly promising for patients with triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive type that makes up about 15-20 percent of cases.
Craig Duvall, associate professor of biomedical engineering, put the effectiveness of a specialized ribonucleic acid hitchhiking on the human protein albumin up against jetPEI nanoparticles, the mostly widely used synthetic carrier for the task of tumor gene silencing.