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MIT Researchers Develop Triple Helix MicroRNA Cancer Treatment

Slashdot: Science - Fetched: December 9th, 2015, 9:00am UTC

Eloking sends a report on new research from MIT, where scientists have developed a promising technique to shrink cancerous tumors. By "twisting RNA strands into a triple helix and embedding them in a biocompatible gel," they were able to efficiently deliver the RNA to tumor cells. "Using this technique, the researchers dramatically improved cancer survival rates by simultaneously turning on a tumor-suppressing microRNA and de-activating one that causes cancer. They believe their approach could also be used for delivering other types of RNA, as well as DNA and other therapeutic molecules. ... Once placed on the tumor, the gel slowly releases microRNA-dendrimer particles, which are absorbed into the tumor cells. After the particles enter the cells, enzymes cut each triple helix into three separate microRNA strands."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=MIT+Researchers+Develop+Triple+Helix+MicroRNA+Cancer+Treatment%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F1OSWX5E"img src="http://slashcdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F15%2F12%2F09%2F0445249%2Fmit-researchers-develop-triple-helix-microrna-cancer-treatment%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="http://slashcdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a class="nobg" href="http://plus.google.com/share?url=http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/12/09/0445249/mit-researchers-develop-triple-helix-microrna-cancer-treatment?utm_source=slashdotamp;utm_medium=googleplus" onclick="javascript:window.open(this.href,'', 'menubar=no,toolbar=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes,height=600,width=600');return false;"img src="http://www.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" alt="Share on Google+"//a /div/ppa href="http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/12/09/0445249/mit-researchers-develop-triple-helix-microrna-cancer-treatment?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~4/KaQ5tIfXIzM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

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