Regenerative Medicine Breakthrough
We are ready to revolutionize regenerative medicine with our latest research finding: a new technology called Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT) that can generate any cell type of interest for treatment within the patient’s own body. This technology may be used to repair injured tissue or restore function of aging tissue, including organs, blood vessels and nerve cells.
Our study shows that injured or compromised organs can be replaced by using our novel nanochip technology.
We have successfully shown that skin can be a fertile land where we can grow any cell type for a failing organ.
As director of Ohio State’s Center for Regenerative Medicine & Cell Based Therapies, I co-led the study in collaboration with Ohio State’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center in the College of Engineering. Results of the regenerative medicine study are now published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Our teams studied mice and pigs in these experiments, and we 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 injury 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 non-invasive process only takes less than a second. The chip does not stay with you, and the reprogramming of the cell starts.
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. The cargo is delivered by zapping the device with a small electrical charge that’s barely felt by the patient. For more information, please email Info.Regenmed@osumc.edu
TNT Research
More from Ohio State
Ohio State first to use new heart failure treatment that could help millions
Heart failure patients have a new treatment option after cardiologists at The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center were the first in the U.S. to use a pulmonary neuromodulation system.
What Outpatient Care New Albany means for the future of central Ohio health care
We've turned our attention to how central Ohioans can reach their best health possible — conveniently and affordably.
Novel gene therapy offers hope for rare neurological disease
New gene therapy helps children born with a rare genetic disorder called AADC deficiency that causes severe physical and developmental disabilities. Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and The Ohio State University College of Medicine say this gene therapy offers hope to those living with incurable genetic and neurodegenerative diseases.
