Disc-related back pain may one day meet its therapeutic match: gene therapy delivered by naturally derived nanocarriers that, a new study shows, repairs damaged discs in the spine and lowers pain symptoms in mice.
Scientists engineered nanocarriers using mouse connective-tissue cells called fibroblasts as a model of skin cells and loaded them with genetic material for a protein key to tissue development. The team injected a solution containing the carriers into damaged discs in mice at the same time the back injury occurred.
Though there is more to learn, the findings suggest gene therapy could offer an effective and long-lasting alternative to opioids for the management of debilitating back pain. This new study builds upon previous work in Higuita-Castro's lab, which reported a year ago that nanocarriers called extracellular vesicles loaded with anti-inflammatory cargo curbed tissue injury in damaged mouse lungs. The engineered carriers are replicas of the natural extracellular vesicles that circulate in humans' bloodstream and biological fluids, carrying messages between cells.
"Our concept is recapitulating development: FOXF1 is expressed during development and in healthy tissue, but it decreases with age," Purmessur Walter said."We're basically trying to trick the cells and give them a boost back to their developmental state when they're growing and at their healthiest." The findings speak to the value of using universal adult donor cells to create these extracellular vesicle therapies, the researchers said, because they don't carry the risk of generating an immune response. The gene therapy also, ideally, would function as a one-time treatment -- a therapeutic gift that keeps on giving.
Higuita-Castro, director of advanced therapeutics and engineering in the College of Medicine Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute and a core faculty member of Ohio State's Gene Therapy Institute, and Purmessur Walter, an investigator in Ohio State's Spine Research Institute and director of the Spinal Therapeutics Laboratory in the College of Engineering, are co-principal investigators on National Institutes of Health grants funding this research.
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