University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed a safer and more efficient way to deliver a promising new method for treating cancer and liver disorders and for vaccination — including a COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna Therapeutics that has advanced to clinical trials with humans.
The technology relies on inserting into cells pieces of carefully designed messenger RNA (mRNA), a strip of genetic material that human cells typically transcribe from a person’s DNA in order to make useful proteins and go about their business. Problems delivering mRNA safely and intact without running afoul of the immune system have held back mRNA-based therapy, but UW-Madison researchers are making tiny balls of minerals that appear to do the trick in mice.
“These microparticles have pores on their surface that are on the nanometer scale that allow them to pick up and carry molecules like proteins or messenger RNA,” says William Murphy, a UW-Madison professor of biomedical engineering and orthopedics. “They mimic something commonly seen in archaeology, when we find intact protein or DNA on a bone sample or an eggshell from thousands of years ago. The mineral components helped to stabilize those molecules for all that time.”
Murphy and UW-Madison collaborators used the mineral-coated microparticles (MCMs) — which are 5 to 10 micrometers in diameter, about the size of a human cell — in a series of experiments to deliver mRNA to cells surrounding wounds in diabetic mice. Wounds healed faster in MCM-treated mice, and cells in related experiments showed much more efficient pickup of the mRNA molecules than other delivery methods.
The researchers described their findings today in the journal Science Advances.
In a healthy cell, DNA is transcribed into mRNA, and mRNA serves as the instructions the cell’s machinery uses to make proteins. A strip of mRNA created in a lab can be substituted into the process to tell a cell to make something new. If that something is a certain kind of antigen, a molecule that alerts the immune system to the presence of a potentially harmful virus, the mRNA has done the job of a vaccine.
Image Credit: University of Wisconsin
News This Week
MIT algorithm discovers antibiotic that can fight drug-resistant diseases
A deep learning algorithm developed at MIT has discovered new antibiotics that can treat drug-resistant diseases by killing 35 powerful bacteria. The pathogens that the halicin antibiotic has targetted include Acinetobacter baumannii, which was nicknamed [...]
Article: ‘Digital Rights in the Age of Super Intelligence’ by Eva Kaili
In our transforming world, digital technology has the critical mass to push our frontiers and release unlimited potential. As the wave of digital transformation soars high, improving our lives, industries and economies, we must not [...]
Scientists Discover a Way to Control the Immune System’s “Natural Killer” Cells With “Invisible” Stem Cells
UC San Francisco scientists have discovered a new way to control the immune system’s “natural killer” (NK) cells, a finding with implications for novel cell therapies and tissue implants that can evade immune rejection. The [...]
Simulations Reveal Nature’s Design For Error Correction During DNA Replication
A team led by scientists at Georgia State University simulates the precise transition between the processes of DNA synthesis and proofreading DNA replication is one of the most important processes in biology, responsible for ensuring [...]
‘Long Covid’ is anything but a mild illness
With the excitement of the Covid vaccine’s arrival, it may be easy to forget and ignore those of us with “long Covid”, who are struggling to reclaim our previous, pre-viral lives and continue to live [...]
Could COVID-19 have wiped out the Neandertals?
Everybody loves Neandertals, those big-brained brutes we supposedly outcompeted and ultimately replaced using our sharp tongues and quick, delicate minds. But did we really, though? Is it mathematically possible that we could yet be them, [...]
Inside Oxford’s coronavirus vaccine development
From a small discovery to producing at scale, photojournalist David Levene documents the groundbreaking work of the scientists of Oxford University during the development of a vaccine which is now poised for approval by medicines regulators. [...]
From molecule to medicine via machine learning
t typically takes many years of experiments to develop a new medicine. Although vaccines to protect against disease from the novel coronavirus are starting to reach clinics around the world, patients and doctors will still [...]
First Optical Tweezers Capable of Trapping Nanoparticles
Optical tweezers are a rapidly growing technology, and have opened up a wide variety of research applications in recent years. The devices operate by trapping particles at the focal points of tightly focused laser beams, [...]
Brain Implants Enable Man to Simultaneously Control Two Prosthetic Limbs with ‘Thoughts’
In what is believed to be a medical first, researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) have enabled a quadriplegic man to control a pair of prosthetic [...]
How to use antibodies to control chemical reactions
Antibodies are remarkable biomarkers: they are the cues that provide us with indications about many diseases and how our immune system counter them. Now a group of scientists from the University of Rome, Tor Vergata [...]
How COVID-19 Reaches the Brain
Using post-mortem tissue samples, a team of researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have studied the mechanisms by which the novel coronavirus can reach the brains of patients with COVID-19, and how the immune system [...]
Medicine-carriers made from human cells can cure lung infections
Scientists used human white blood cell membranes to carry two drugs, an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory, directly to infected lungs in mice. The nano-sized drug delivery method developed at Washington State University successfully treated both [...]
Quantum nanodiamonds may help detect disease earlier
The quantum sensing abilities of nanodiamonds can be used to improve the sensitivity of paper-based diagnostic tests, potentially allowing for earlier detection of diseases such as HIV, according to a study led by UCL researchers [...]
‘Nanobodies’ could hold clues to new COVID-19 therapies
WEHI researchers are studying 'nanobodies' – tiny immune proteins made by alpacas—in a bid to understand whether they might be effective in blocking SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Alpacas produce unique antibodies—called nanobodies—that can [...]
Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine
The University of Oxford, in collaboration with AstraZeneca plc, today announces interim trial data from its Phase III trials that show its candidate vaccine, ChAdOx1 nCoV-2019, is effective at preventing COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) and offers a [...]
