{"id":100638,"date":"2020-01-09T13:44:28","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T21:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/nanoparticles-deliver-suicide-gene-therapy-to-pediatric-brain-tumors-growing-in-mice"},"modified":"2020-01-09T13:44:28","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T21:44:28","slug":"nanoparticles-deliver-suicide-gene-therapy-to-pediatric-brain-tumors-growing-in-mice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/nanoparticles-deliver-suicide-gene-therapy-to-pediatric-brain-tumors-growing-in-mice","title":{"rendered":"Nanoparticles deliver \u2018suicide gene\u2019 therapy to pediatric brain tumors growing in mice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nanoparticles-deliver-suicide-gene-therapy-to-pediatric-brain-tumors-growing-in-mice.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Johns Hopkins researchers report that a type of biodegradable, lab-engineered nanoparticle they fashioned can successfully deliver a \u201csuicide gene\u201d to pediatric brain tumor cells implanted in the brains of mice. The poly(beta-amino ester) nanoparticles, known as PBAEs, were part of a treatment that also used a drug to kill the cells and prolong the test animals\u2019 survival.<\/p>\n<p>In their study, described in a report published January 2020 in the journal <i>Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine<\/i>, the researchers caution that for safety and biological reasons, it is unlikely that the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/suicide+gene\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">suicide gene<\/a> herpes simplex virus type I thymidine kinase (HSVtk)\u2014which makes tumor cells more sensitive to the lethal effects of the anti-viral drug ganciclovir\u2014could be the exact therapy used to treat human medulloblastoma and atypical teratoid\/rhabdoid tumors (AT\/RT) in children.<\/p>\n<p>So-called \u201csuicide <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/genes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">genes<\/a>\u201d have been studied and used in cancer treatments for more than 25 years. The HSVtk gene makes an enzyme that helps restore the function of natural tumor suppression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Johns Hopkins researchers report that a type of biodegradable, lab-engineered nanoparticle they fashioned can successfully deliver a \u201csuicide gene\u201d to pediatric brain tumor cells implanted in the brains of mice. The poly(beta-amino ester) nanoparticles, known as PBAEs, were part of a treatment that also used a drug to kill the cells and prolong the test [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-nanotechnology","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}