"Mini-Factories" To Make Medicine Inside the Body 79
Diggester writes "A group of scientists from MIT and the University of British Columbia have created 'mini-factories' that can be programmed to produce different types of proteins, and when implanted into living cells, it should distribute those proteins throughout the body. The scientists have initially triggered these 'factories' into action through the use of a laser light to relay the message of which proteins to produce."
Re:Wow, it's like a simple cell (Score:4, Informative)
skimmed the O, what they've done is combine two methods; essentially they've created an artificial cell wall and populated it's innards with the cellular machinery from e. coli bacteria. then they've introduced a piece of dna for the protein they're looking for. the factory claim comes from claims that the hybrid cells can still produce proteins under turbulence of the blood stream.
as far as i can tell they don't know where the energy is coming from, the action dies out after around 24 hours. these letters are usually incremental publications, it's very short and excludes most of the details, this may be just experimental error, there's no reason to suspect that this is potentially superior to conventional mab techniques, or is in any way safe to use in vivo. they look like they're looking for a mechanism right now, but this is mostly academic work, basic research, and most of all ignores the complexity of the mammalian immune system.
this is being published now for the sake of shopping it around for more grant money. if you want the O and can figure out how to get me your email, i can send a limited number of copies.