STICKING IT TO TUMORS: To deliver therapeutic microRNAs (miRs) to tumors, braids of three microRNAs (miRs)—an antisense strand that blocks a miR overactive in cancer, a strand that replaces a deficient miR, and a stabilizing strand (1)—are added to a dendrimer (2) and mixed with a hydrogel scaffold (3). When researchers introduced the sticky gel onto mouse mammary tumors (4), the malignancies shrank and the animals lived longer (5). © GEORGE RETSECK; J.CONDE ET AL., NATURE MATERIALSRead the full article here.
Anticancer microRNA Braids
RNAs wound together can replenish or diminish levels of miRNAs thrown into disarray by cancer.
Written byRuth Williams
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Meet the Author
Ruth is a freelance journalist. Before freelancing, Ruth was a news editor for the Journal of Cell Biology in New York and an assistant editor for Nature Reviews Neuroscience in London. Prior to that, she was a bona fide pipette-wielding, test tube–shaking, lab coat–shirking research scientist. She has a PhD in genetics from King’s College London, and was a postdoc in stem cell biology at Imperial College London. Today she lives and writes in Connecticut.
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