A method to inject drugs directly into cells?
A recent paper published in Nature covers some exciting research work – a new therapeutic method designed to allow the injection of drugs directly into cells, conferring a high selectivity to treatments. Researchers describe a new method for delivering proteins into living cells using a bacterial contractile injection system. They engineered this system to be able to target specific cells and release a payload of proteins into them. But how does it work? The bacterial contractile injection system described in the article uses a small, nanoscale apparatus called a bacteriophage T4 contractile sheath. This sheath comprises proteins that can be…