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takyon writes:

Researchers at Ohio State University have developed Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT), a type of regenerative medicine technology. It uses a pad of "nanochips" and an electric current to send DNA into skin cells of a living being, reprogramming them into becoming other types of cells. The researchers believe that the cells can also be harvested and injected elsewhere in the body, such as the brain. What they have accomplished is the healing of mice and pig legs by reprogramming skin cells to become vascular cells:

Researchers studied mice and pigs in these experiments. In the study, researchers were able to reprogram skin cells to become vascular cells in badly injured legs that lacked blood flow. Within one week, active blood vessels appeared in the injured leg, and by the second week, the leg was saved. In lab tests, this technology was also shown to reprogram skin cells in the live body into nerve cells that were injected into brain-injured mice to help them recover from stroke.

"This is difficult to imagine, but it is achievable, successfully working about 98 percent of the time. With this technology, we can convert skin cells into elements of any organ with just one touch. This process only takes less than a second and is non-invasive, and then you're off. The chip does not stay with you, and the reprogramming of the cell starts. Our technology keeps the cells in the body under immune surveillance, so immune suppression is not necessary," said Sen, who also is executive director of Ohio State's Comprehensive Wound Center.

TNT technology has two major components: First is a nanotechnology-based chip designed to deliver cargo to adult cells in the live body. Second is the design of specific biological cargo for cell conversion. This cargo, when delivered using the chip, converts an adult cell from one type to another, said first author Daniel Gallego-Perez, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and general surgery who also was a postdoctoral researcher in both Sen's and Lee's laboratories.

TNT doesn't require any laboratory-based procedures and may be implemented at the point of care. The procedure is also non-invasive. The cargo is delivered by zapping the device with a small electrical charge that's barely felt by the patient.

Also at The Engineer.

Topical tissue nano-transfection mediates non-viral stroma reprogramming and rescue (DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2017.134) (DX)

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