(Wikimedia Commons)
Techulon Inc., a life sciences company in Blacksburg, Virginia, has signed an agreement with Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties Inc. to license and market a new, traceable DNA delivery platform created to deliver genetic medicine to cells while carrying a tracker beacon so scientists can follow its progress. Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties is the university’s technology transfer arm.
The licensed therapeutic/diagnostic material was created by Theresa Reineke, associate professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech, and Joshua Bryson, principal scientist at Techulon Inc. Reineke’s research group at Virginia Tech is creating carbohydrate-based polymers for the delivery of genetic drugs to combat both cancer and heart disease.
“Genetic drugs,” says Reineke in a statement, “such as those that can alter or control gene expression, aim to treat disease at the genetic level and have the added benefit of being more specific for their medicinal target” than traditional drugs based on proteins.
Reineke’s group created novel supramolecules with chemistry that binds and compacts nucleic acids -– pieces of the DNA -– into nanoparticles. The researchers are able to track the polymers using sensitive microscopes, which capture the nanoparticle luminescence. At the sub-millimeter or tissue scale, magnetic resonance imaging is used to see where the nanoparticles are going.
Molecules with these “delivery beacons” also provide potential for the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases.
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