The Elowitz Lab at Caltech

Synthetic biology could enable new types of programmable therapeutics. Our new preprint introduces synthetic protein circuits that selectively trigger cell death in Ras-mutant cancer cells, with interesting advantages compared to existing approaches. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In a mouse model of Ras-driven liver cancer, systemic treatment with the circuits (lower row) reduced tumor burden compared to untreated controls (upper row). Much more to explore.

Synthetic biology could enable new types of programmable therapeutics. Our new preprint introduces synthetic protein circuits that selectively trigger cell death in Ras-mutant cancer cells, with interesting advantages compared to existing approaches. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We tried many, many, many circuit designs, eventually generating ones that sensitively discriminate Ras mutant cancer cells. We also generated protease-activated proteases to amplify weak oncogenic signals.

Synthetic biology could enable new types of programmable therapeutics. Our new preprint introduces synthetic protein circuits that selectively trigger cell death in Ras-mutant cancer cells, with interesting advantages compared to existing approaches. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In this paradigm, engineered proteins are introduced into cancer and healthy cells using LNP-delivered mRNA. They then sense cancer markers (such as mutant Ras) and trigger engineered cell death effectors (caspases or gasdermins) only in cancer cells. (idealized schematic)