Rice University scientists have designed a tunable virus that works like a safe deposit box. It takes two keys to open it and release its therapeutic cargo. The Rice lab of bioengineer Junghae Suh has developed an adeno-associated virus (AAV) that unlocks only in the presence of two selected proteases, enzymes that cut up other proteins for disposal. Because certain proteases are elevated at tumor sites, the viruses can be designed to target and destroy the cancer cells. The work appears online this week in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano. An adeno-associated virus capsid (blue) modified by peptides (red) inserted to lock the virus is the result of research at Rice University into a new way to target cancerous and other diseased cells. The peptides are keyed to proteases overexpressed at the site of diseased tissues; they unlock the capsid and allow it to deliver its therapeutic cargo. (Credit: Junghae Suh/Rice University) AAVs are fairly benign and have become the object of intense study as delivery vehicles for gene therapies. Researchers often try to target AAVs to cellular receptors that may be slightly overexpressed on diseased cells. The Rice lab takes a different approach. “We were looking for other types of biomarkers beyond
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