(Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University, and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago have created DNA origami structures – which are made by folding DNA into nanoscale scaffolds – that can selectively deliver fluorescent imaging agents to pancreatic cancer cells without affecting normal cells. The team experimented with different sizes of tube- and tile-shaped DNA origami structures. They found that tube-shaped structures about 70 nanometers in length and 30 nanometers in diameter, as well as ones that are about 6 nanometers in length and 30 nanometers in diameter, experienced the greatest uptake by the pancreatic cancer tissue while not being absorbed by the surrounding, noncancerous tissue. Larger tube-shaped structures and all sizes of tile-shaped structures did not perform as well.
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