Sensors made out of customized DNA molecules may be used to treat cancer in the future. At the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Rome Tor Vergata researchers are working on nanosensors that are made from DNA molecules and may lead to new cancer tests and possible drugs.
The DNA based nanosensors are able to detect a broad class of proteins called transcription factors. These are said to be like “master switches in the control panel of our life”.
The study was led by Alexis Vallée-Bélisle, a postdoctoral researcher in UCSB's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He said that the fate of our cells was controlled by thousands of different proteins, called transcription factors. The role of these proteins was to read the genome and translate it into instructions for the synthesis of the various molecules that compose and control the cell.
Transcription factors act a little bit like the 'settings' of our cells, just like the settings on our phones or computers. What these sensors do is read those settings he said. Their sensors monitor transcription factor activities, and could be used to make sure that stem cells have been properly reprogrammed he added.
Vallée-Bélisle also said that they could be used to determine which transcription factors were activated or repressed in a patient's cancer cells, thus enabling physicians to use the right combination of drugs for each patient.
Andrew Bonham, a postdoctoral scholar at UCSB and co-first author of the study said that labs had devised other ways to read these transcription factors but none were as quick and convenient as these sensors. Bonham said that in most labs the researchers spend hours extracting the proteins from cells before analyzing them. With the new sensors, we just mash the cells up, put the sensors in, and measure the level of fluorescence of the sample he said.