• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Heals organs with a single touch! TNT technology.

Cheetah

Master Poster
Cheetah
Joined
Feb 4, 2010
Messages
2,934
Location
South Africa
TNT technology (Tissue Nanotransfection)

"By using our novel nanochip technology, injured or compromised organs can be replaced. We have shown that skin is a fertile land where we can grow the elements of any organ that is declining,"

"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,"

This just sounds like BS, but is legit. Published in Nature Nanotechnology.

"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,"

"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."

Badly injured mice were healed in 3 weeks with one touch of the chip.

What do you think?

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-08-breakthrough-device.html
 
Last edited:
I also can't picture what's happening here. The device touches your skin and somehow a faulty internal organ (say) begins to heal? What is this mysterious "cargo" of which they speak?
 
The actual paper is behind a paywall, but I'd read that first. Pop science reporting tends to overstate things.
Still, from the abstract it did seem they have found a novel way to reprogram some cells to reproduce some sort of tissue.
The skin is a continuous source of new cell material and if they've found a way to redirect re-programmed cells to their target destination the body would integrate them using normal pathways.

the abstract seems to suggest they worked on blood vessels and neurons. I can sorta see the blood vessels by taking skin near the damage and letting normal blood flow direct the cells, the neurons I don't see how, and I don't have access to the full paper.

https://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2017.134.html
 
Looks neat.

It's basically a variant on electroporation, in which rapidly varying electric fields are applied to cells to shock their membranes open long enough for a payload to get in, like a drug, gene, etc. It varies a lot from cell to cell: some cells don't get any payload, some get so much they end up poisoned and/or carcinogenic, so it's not a common therapy.

These guys are electroporating through a plate with widely spaced holes fabricated into it, such that a cell should only be exposed to one batch of holes. For a couple of reasons (higher stimulation, more drug, etc), this results in a reliable enough payload delivery to consider it as a possibility for gene therapy and similar treatments. That's the real story here.

They demonstrate this by inducing some epithelial (skin) cells to become endothelial cells (blood vessel lining), and showed that it triggered a growth of blood vessels up to the skin in various injury models where the skin would otherwise have died. Which might actually be directly useful for skin regeneration treatments in burn victims or what have you, but it's not going to regrow a kidney or anything.
 
I'm not an expert on biology but I'm not seeing anything unusual in the article. Some direct parts of this research are thirteen years old and these are based on even older research.

Mainly though, you've got the reference to the exosomal shuttle RNA dating back to 2007. You can read about that in The Role of Exosomal Shuttle RNA (esRNA) in Cell-to-Cell Communication

This article from 2004 talks about cell therapy to increase blood flow. Cell Therapy For Therapeutic Vascularization. Specifically:

endothelial progenitor cells were isolated from human umbilical cord blood, bone marrow–derived mononuclear cells, and CD34+ or CD133+ hematopoietic stem cells

There are some articles that talk about tumor formation from stem cells and how this may limit stem cell therapies.


Then you get to the central issue with Direct conversion of fibroblasts to functional neurons by defined factors from 2010.

Here's the important part:

Cellular differentiation and lineage commitment are considered to be robust and irreversible processes during development. Recent work has shown that mouse and human fibroblasts can be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state with a combination of four transcription factors. This raised the question of whether transcription factors could directly induce other defined somatic cell fates, and not only an undifferentiated state.

In other words, everyone knows that fetal stem cells form all types of tissues including skin, nerves, muscles, bone marrow, and organ tissues. So, past research has been on collecting stem cells to see if these could be used to repair damaged tissues. What this article is talking about is whether you can alter an already differentiated cell to perform the function of another type of cell. Apparently it is possible because they took connective tissue fibroblasts and altered (induced) them to act like neurons. Specifically:

These induced neuronal (iN) cells express multiple neuron-specific proteins, generate action potentials and form functional synapses.

And apparently researchers were pretty happy about this as you can see in an article from just a year later in 2011. Highly Efficient miRNA-Mediated Reprogramming of Mouse and Human Somatic Cells to Pluripotency

The transformation of differentiated cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has revolutionized stem cell biology by providing a more tractable source of pluripotent cells for regenerative therapy.

However, there are limits on injecting RNA or DNA into a cell. This was done in the past primarily using viruses. However, viral transfer has several problems including how much RNA you can fit.

You have the article on Nanochannel electroporation from 2011. Electroporation is at least 25 years old. This is a refinement of previous methods.

The work on repairing damaged brain tissue dates back to 2013. Environmental impact on direct neuronal reprogramming in vivo in the adult brain

And I believe the demonstration on changing fibroblast to endothelial cells was done two years ago in 2015.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
...
They demonstrate this by inducing some epithelial (skin) cells to become endothelial cells (blood vessel lining), and showed that it triggered a growth of blood vessels up to the skin in various injury models where the skin would otherwise have died. Which might actually be directly useful for skin regeneration treatments in burn victims or what have you, but it's not going to regrow a kidney or anything.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Skin carries stem cells, but they're specific to skin regeneration.

So the "heals organs" claim is, at best, quite a stretch.
 
GlennB said:
I also can't picture what's happening here. The device touches your skin and somehow a faulty internal organ (say) begins to heal? What is this mysterious "cargo" of which they speak?
Click to expand...
Adding to what others have posted:

The nano-vehicle transports designer DNA or other molecules that change the cell's genetic dynamics.

Topical tissue nano-transfection mediates non-viral stroma reprogramming and rescue
Here, we report a novel yet simple-to-implement non-viral approach to topically reprogram tissues through a nanochannelled device validated with well-established and newly developed reprogramming models of induced neurons and endothelium, respectively. We demonstrate the simplicity and utility of this approach by rescuing necrotizing tissues and whole limbs using two murine models of injury-induced ischaemia.
Click to expand...

Previously viral vectors were used to alter the genetics of a cell. This technique uses a mechanical vector.

Device instantly delivers new DNA or RNA into living skin cells to change their function
 
Must be tricky to get to the cell you want to reprogram, and then you have, what? a bunch of cells in a developmental line cooking away.

Would like to read about an actual case. What was wrong. What was done. How it worked and what happened.

Otherwise, pretty cool.
 
marplots said:
Must be tricky to get to the cell you want to reprogram, and then you have, what? a bunch of cells in a developmental line cooking away.

Would like to read about an actual case. What was wrong. What was done. How it worked and what happened.

Otherwise, pretty cool.
Click to expand...
Sounds like only mice so far, and only in "induced injury" of an ischemic sort. Like a tourniquet on too long, not the damages of missing tissues.
 
Thanks for the comments and info.

A bit difficult to puzzle out whats really going on, but it sounds pretty amazing.

They also grew mouse brain cells on the skin that were harvested and injected to repair a stroke.

Maybe other organs can be repaired in a similar manner, depending on the damage, dunno.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom