The scientist from the University of Malaga Elena González, also belonging to the Malaga Biomedical Research Institute and Nanomedicine Platform (IBIMA BIONAND Platform), has discovered an innovative way to introduce genetic material into our cells – cellular transfection -, finding a very special way of doing so, using so-called CCDs (cationic carbon nanoparticles), small carbon particles coated with a positive electrical charge, which allows them to transport vectors with genetic information to cells safely and efficiently. The results of this study have been published in the scientific journal ‘Biological Procedures Online’.
According to this researcher from the Department of Cellular Biology, Genetics and Physiology of the UMA, the cationic carbon dots adhere to the genes that we want to introduce, which have a negative charge, forming a kind of ‘package’ that can enter our cells. No problem.
“Once inside, these CCDs make it easier for the genetic material to be released and expressed to produce the specific proteins encoded to begin doing their job. A fact that is important, since depending on which genes we ‘package’ the effects of this introduction of genetic information can have very diverse applications, fundamentally in research, to better understand how our cells work, model pathologies and even think about future developments that look for gene therapy,” explains the researcher, who is also coordinator of the scientific area ‘Nanosystems and Advanced Therapies’ of IBIMA-BIONAD Platform.
Utility
Thus, with this work, which has been developed together with the researcher from the Public University of Navarra Manuel Algarra, it is evident that CCDs are really effective and that “they not only increase the efficiency of the introduction of genetic material into cells, but “The method is very respectful of the cells and barely affects their survival and viability.”
On the other hand, these cationic carbon nanoparticles are easy to produce, even on a large scale, which means, as they point out, that they could be useful in many biomedical research applications, as well as to facilitate the research necessary before being able to be used in gene therapy for the treatment of diseases or vaccine production, among others.
