Cheap and targeted
What if doctors could treat cancer by rearranging patients' cells so that they target the tumor and destroy it? With such a rapid development of technology, this is no longer a fantasy.
Over the past few years, scientists have managed to develop many revolutionary methods of cell therapy for cancer treatment, such as immunotherapy of leukemia and lymphoma using CAR-T cells, as well as gene therapy for the treatment of severe combined immunodeficiency and beta-thalassemia. Researchers around the world are working to create similar treatments for many other deadly diseases. But there is a catch: their cost reaches from several hundred thousand to almost two million dollars, that is, they are inaccessible to all those in need.
Fortunately, not so long ago, scientists from the Marlan and Rosemary Borns College of Engineering in California invented a device that has the potential to mass produce engineered cells at a much lower price.
This technology, which the authors call deterministic mechanical electroporation, uses a fluid flow to impale each cell of the population on a tiny needle, then the flow reverses, removing the cells from the needles, leaving in each a singular and precisely defined pore that ensures the delivery of genes.
The key point is the unique single-site portioning mechanism, which minimizes cell damage and at the same time provides a clear pathway for the introduction of genes. This makes delivery efficient and increases cell viability, which is usually difficult to achieve when using other non-viral delivery methods like electroporation.
The price reduction with this approach occurs because viral carriers usually make up a significant part of the cost of producing cellular preparations.
Article by Dixit et al. Massively-Parallelized, Deterministic Mechanoporation for Intracellular Delivery is published in the journal Nano Letters.
Elena Panasyuk, portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on materials from UC, Riverside: Precisely poking cells en masse to cure cancer.