{"id":129623,"date":"2021-10-28T09:22:40","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T16:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/engineers-devise-a-way-to-selectively-turn-on-rna-therapies-in-human-cells"},"modified":"2021-10-28T09:22:40","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T16:22:40","slug":"engineers-devise-a-way-to-selectively-turn-on-rna-therapies-in-human-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/engineers-devise-a-way-to-selectively-turn-on-rna-therapies-in-human-cells","title":{"rendered":"Engineers devise a way to selectively turn on RNA therapies in human cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/engineers-devise-a-way-to-selectively-turn-on-rna-therapies-in-human-cells3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a way to selectively turn on gene therapies in target cells, including human cells. Their technology can detect specific messenger RNA sequences in cells, and that detection then triggers production of a specific protein from a transgene, or artificial gene.<\/p>\n<p>Because transgenes can have negative and even dangerous effects when expressed in the wrong <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cells<\/a>, the researchers wanted to find a way to reduce off-target effects from gene therapies. One way of distinguishing different types of cells is by reading the RNA sequences inside them, which differ from tissue to tissue.<\/p>\n<p>By finding a way to produce transgene only after \u201creading\u201d specific RNA sequences inside cells, the researchers developed a technology that could fine-tune <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/gene+therapies\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">gene therapies<\/a> in applications ranging from regenerative medicine to cancer treatment. For example, researchers could potentially create new therapies to destroy tumors by designing their system to identify cancer cells and produce a toxic protein just inside those cells, killing them in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a way to selectively turn on gene therapies in target cells, including human cells. Their technology can detect specific messenger RNA sequences in cells, and that detection then triggers production of a specific protein from a transgene, or artificial gene. Because transgenes can have negative and even [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129623","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\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}