Illinois professor Bumsoo Han, left, and postdoctoral researcher Sae Rome Choi are authors of a brand new examine exploring the usage of DNA origami for higher imaging of dense pancreatic tissue for most cancers detection and potential remedy. Credit score: Fred Zwicky
One of many challenges of combating pancreatic most cancers is discovering methods to penetrate the organ’s dense tissue to outline the margins between malignant and regular tissue. A brand new examine makes use of DNA origami buildings to selectively ship fluorescent imaging brokers to pancreatic most cancers cells with out affecting regular cells.
The examine, led by College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign mechanical science and engineering professor Bumsoo Han and professor Jong Hyun Choi at Purdue College, discovered that specifically engineered DNA origami buildings carrying imaging dye packets can particularly goal human KRAS mutant most cancers cells, that are current in 95% of pancreatic most cancers instances.
“This research highlights not only the potential for more accurate cancer imaging, but also selective chemotherapy delivery, a significant advancement over current pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma treatments,” stated Han, who can be affiliated with the Most cancers Middle at Illinois. “The current process of cancerous tissue removal through surgical resection can be improved greatly by more accurate imaging of tumor margins.”
The findings of the examine are revealed within the journal Superior Science.
DNA is a protracted double-stranded molecule, making it a perfect candidate for folding into nanoscale scaffolds that maintain molecules—on this case, fluorescent imaging dyes—in place and to create new, artificial molecular buildings.
The staff developed pancreatic most cancers fashions utilizing 3D printed “tumoroids” and microfluidic programs that mimic the advanced tumor microenvironment—known as microfluidic tumor-stroma fashions—to scale back the reliance on animal tissue and speed up translation to scientific use in people.
To check the uptake of the origami buildings in cancerous tissues, the researchers added the dye-packed DNA buildings to the tumor fashions and tracked their motion with fluorescence imaging. They then administered the dye-delivering buildings to mice with human pancreatic tumor tissue to discover the distribution of the DNA origami packets in additional physiologically related circumstances.
The staff experimented with totally different sizes of tube and tile-shaped DNA origami molecules. They discovered that tube-shaped buildings about 70 nanometers in size and 30 nanometers in diameter, in addition to ones which might be about 6 nanometers in size and 30 nanometers in diameter, skilled the best uptake by the pancreatic most cancers tissue whereas not being absorbed by the encircling noncancerous tissue. Bigger tube-shaped molecules and all sizes of tile-shaped molecules didn’t carry out as properly.
“We were surprised to see how drastically the variation in size and shape of the DNA origami packets influenced uptake by cancer cells versus healthy cells,” Han stated. “I thought that smaller would be better, so that there would be more accumulation, but it looks like there is a certain sweet spot for not just size but also shape.”
The following step is to discover the usage of origami-folded DNA molecules loaded with chemotherapy medication for selective supply to most cancers cells with out affecting regular cells, Han stated. “Doing so with engineered tumor models to reduce animal use and accelerate translation in drug discovery is another direction we are very proud of.”
Extra data:
Hye‐ran Moon et al, DNA Origami‐Cyanine Nanocomplex for Precision Imaging of KRAS‐Mutant Pancreatic Most cancers Cells, Superior Science (2025). DOI: 10.1002/advs.202410278
Offered by
College of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Quotation:
DNA origami provides extra correct imaging within the struggle towards pancreatic most cancers (2025, April 22)
retrieved 22 April 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-04-dna-origami-accurate-imaging-pancreatic.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Aside from any honest dealing for the aim of personal examine or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is offered for data functions solely.
