Closer Look
A new way to deliver proteins could solve a central challenge in genetic medicine
Des Helmore/Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research
Delivery, delivery, delivery. Like location in real estate, getting gene therapy where it needs to go has been the steepest mountain to climb. Now an answer may be emerging from the lab of CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang (here's a prescient profile), inspired by a New Zealand scientist studying the grass grub beetle (above) who discovered bacteria armed with poison darts. Writing in Nature, Zhang's team reports their tool can precisely send any protein of their choosing to any cell of their choosing. So far it's only in lab dishes and in mice and it cannot be used today to deliver CRISPR, but it adds to new delivery solutions advanced by top CRISPR labs.
Right now delivering proteins into patients' bodies means encoding them in lipid nanoparticles or in benign viruses. That limits where they can go. But the new tool engineered in the Zhang lab is among the world's smallest syringes, with a long body and a sharp spike. STAT's Jason Mast explains how it works.
addiction
In a first, Narcan goes over the counter
The overdose-reversing drug naloxone can now be sold without a prescription, the FDA said yesterday, making it the first opioid-treatment drug to be sold over the counter. Narcan is the brand name for the best-known form of naloxone, which can undo overdoses of opioids such as heroin and fentanyl as well as prescription versions including oxycodone. Most of the more than 100,000 U.S. overdose deaths a year are due to opioids, and most of them on potent synthetic versions such as fentanyl.
Narcan will become available over-the-counter by late summer. Already available in pharmacies in states that allow it, FDA approval means now it can be sold in convenience stores, supermarkets, and online retailers. But Narcan is just one version. As STAT's Lev Facher reported earlier this week, pharma companies are aggressively marketing high-cost naloxone products that divert resources from cheaper forms, off patent for nearly 40 years.
science
Gairdners honor achievements in protein structure, bacterial communication, and perinatal care
The Canada Gairdner Awards belong to a select club known as Nobel predictors, along with Lasker and Horwitz prizes. This year's Gairdners, announced today, honor work predicting protein structure, understanding how microbes behave, and developing low-cost global interventions in perinatal maternal and child health. The winners are:
- Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both of DeepMind, for creating AlphaFold, an AI-based technology for protein structure prediction, "with enormous potential to accelerate biological and medical research."
- Bonnie Bassler of Princeton, Peter Greenberg of the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Michael Silverman of the Agouron Institute for discovering how bacteria communicate, "yielding novel avenues for therapeutics against infectious diseases."
- José Belizán of the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy Argentina for developing programs that improve well-being and care during pregnancy, reduce morbidity and mortality, and promote equity in vulnerable populations, demonstrating "the importance of representation from low- and middle-income countries in global health research."
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