New American Chemical Society podcast: Genetically-engineered spider silk for gene therapy

The new installment from the world's largest scientific society explains in non-technical language that gene therapy involves the use of beneficial genes to prevent or treat disease. It requires safe and efficient carriers or “vectors.”

Those carriers are the counterparts to pills and capsules, transporting therapeutic genes into cells in the body. Safety and other concerns surround the experimental use of viruses to insert genes. The lack of good gene delivery systems is a main reason why there are no FDA-approved gene therapies, despite almost 1,500 clinical trials since 1989. The new study focused on one promising prospect, silk proteins, which are biocompatible and have been used in everyday medicine and medical research for decades.

David Kaplan, Ph.D., notes in the podcast that he modified spider silk proteins so that they attach to diseased cells and not to healthy cells. He also engineered the spider silk to be able to carry a gene that codes for a protein that makes fireflies glow so that they could provide a visual signal — that's seen with specialized equipment — that the gene has reached its intended cellular target.

In lab studies using mice containing human breast cancer cells, the spider-silk proteins attached to the cancer cells and injected the DNA material into the cells without harming the mice. Kaplan says that the results suggest that genetically-engineered spider-silk proteins represent a versatile, very highly tailorable and useful new platform polymer for nonviral gene delivery.

The new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from www.acs.org/globalchallenges.

Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions is a series of podcasts describing some of the 21st Century's most daunting problems, and how cutting-edge research in chemistry matters in the quest for solutions. Global Challenges is the centerpiece in an alliance on sustainability between ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Global Challenges is a sweeping panorama of global challenges that includes dilemmas such as providing a hungry, thirsty world with ample supplies of safe food and clean water; developing alternatives to petroleum to fuel society; preserving the environment and assuring a sustainable future for our children; and improving human health. During the 2011 global celebration of the International Year of Chemistry (IYC), Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions also is focusing on the main themes of IYC — health, environment, energy, and materials.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.

——————————————————————————–