Scientists designed Peptide-based Delivery Platforms to cure Cancer

Scientists at CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) invented peptide-based delivery platforms for targeting tumours. This can be helpful in curing Cancer. The scientists developed this platform by using bacterial fermentation to bind DNA or small interfering RNA (siRNA) or short hairpin RNA (shRNA) and delivering them into cells to target tumours. Given that DNA, siRNA and shRNA are negatively-charged, they need carriers like recombinant proteins.

The benefit of DNA or siRNA is that they help in silencing the targeted genes. For example, if the TF gene involved in new blood vessel formation is silenced, the tumour  will degenerate. At CCMB, the scientists developed chimeric peptide by fusing three peptide modules to deliver DNA or shRNA for degenerating tumours.
Chimeric proteins with varied functional properties can be obtained from any organism or a virus and produced in bacterial factories using standard practices of recombinant DNA method.

The advantage of using chimeric proteins is that they could be changed to target different tumours. Scientists are making efforts to evolve peptide-based platform technology with other homing ligands recognising different targets.