3/3/21, What do teeth and immunotherapy have in common? Check out Haoran and Badeia’s recent work published in Nanoscale!

Haoran and Badeia's work on delivering cell-penetrating QDs into T cells will appear in Nanoscale. Congratulations!

Targeted delivery of genetic materials into T cell lymphocytes holds the promise to boost T-cell-mediated immunity, ranging from the protection against COVID to antitumor responses. However, non-viral cytosolic delivery into T cells remains challenging. The Hu group utilized single-particle tracking to investigate the interaction between human T cells and individual fluorescent quantum dots decorated with cell-penetrating peptides derived from teeth. The study discovered that these functionalized nanoparticles entered T cells through an alternative pathway distinct from endocytosis, thereby allowing the nanoparticles to access the cytoplasmic machinery. The study paves the way for improving drug delivery and immunotherapy using novel nanocarriers. The interdisciplinary research is a collaboration between biochemistry (Prof. Ying Hu), physical chemistry (Prof. Preston Snee), and Oral Biology (Prof. Anne George).