{"id":231961,"date":"2026-02-23T22:36:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T04:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/researchers-copy-viral-strategies-to-get-mrna-medicines-into-cells-in-one-piece"},"modified":"2026-02-23T22:36:39","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T04:36:39","slug":"researchers-copy-viral-strategies-to-get-mrna-medicines-into-cells-in-one-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/researchers-copy-viral-strategies-to-get-mrna-medicines-into-cells-in-one-piece","title":{"rendered":"Researchers copy viral strategies to get mRNA medicines into cells in one piece"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-copy-viral-strategies-to-get-mrna-medicines-into-cells-in-one-piece2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Drugs made of mRNA have the potential to transform medicine\u2014if only they could get into cells in one piece. Now, University of Connecticut researchers have shown that packaging mRNA like a virus could smuggle it into cells safely, opening up a new way to deliver mRNA into cells to treat diseases such as cancer. Their research is <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/acsnano.5c12871\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal ACS Nano.<\/p>\n<p>Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a single strand of ribonucleic acids that tells the protein-making machinery inside cells what to do. Usually RNA strands are made using the DNA blueprints inside a cell\u2019s central nucleus, and then travel out to the protein production areas. Getting a medicinal mRNA into a cell from outside, though, is another matter. Most things trying to enter a cell have to pass through an endosome. An endosome is like a decontamination bubble. Its interior becomes acidic, which activates enzymes that chew up anything potentially dangerous\u2014like foreign RNA.<\/p>\n<p>But many viruses have evolved to hijack this system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Drugs made of mRNA have the potential to transform medicine\u2014if only they could get into cells in one piece. Now, University of Connecticut researchers have shown that packaging mRNA like a virus could smuggle it into cells safely, opening up a new way to deliver mRNA into cells to treat diseases such as cancer. Their [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231961","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}