Messenger RNA can be used to stimulate T cells to fight cancer and autoimmune disease, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Put together a shelf stable particle with a polyester shell, a homing mechanism, and mRNA

instructions, and what do you have?

A new technology that may be able to train your own T cells inside your body to combat

some types of cancer and autoimmune disease.

Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering expert Jordan Green and colleagues have shown that

such an approach works in the lab.

mRNAs in all of our cells, our life depends on our mRNA.

This is just giving an additional instruction, for short period of time, to the right kind

of cells.

But we found as with certain types of targeting agents, we could not only give the instruction

to those cells, but we could also activate them and alert them to how to function.

The targeting ligand both stimulates the cells and then helps deliver the instructions.

The targeting ligand is like a key on the outside of the particle.

It goes to the body, bumping into all the different cells until it finds its lock that

the key fits right in, and then it'll enter that cell.

At Johns Hopkins, I'm Elizabeth Tracey.