Researchers at the Ohio State University have discovered a new way to administer gene therapy agents without a needle.

L. James Lee and his colleagues call this revolutionary new way of injecting therapeutic biomolecules as "nanochannel electroporation" or NEP. The technique uses electricity to inject the biomolecules into the affected in a fraction of a second. Further research could mean a new way to inject gene therapy cures to cancer cells.

The technique, described online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, has been successful in inserting anti-cancer genes into individual leukemia cells to eradicate them.

"NEP allows us to investigate how drugs and other biomolecules affect cell biology and genetic pathways at a level not achievable by any existing techniques," said Lee, who is the Helen C. Krutz Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and director of the NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Affordable Nanoengineering of Polymeric Biomedical Devices at Ohio State.

The technique could solve the problem of how to inject biomaterial into cells for gene therapy. Most human cells are too small to be injected by common needles. With NEP researchers can now send the agents through a nanometer scale channel in the device through the cell wall. Electrodes in the device turn the it into a tiny circuit. Electric pulses push the therapeutic agent through the channel into the cell.

Lee's team was able to insert therapeutic RNA agents into leukemia cells in a few milliseconds. The result was thorough. After 10 milliseconds the RNA agents were able to kill most of the leukemia cells.

For now, the technique is still in the research and development stage but the team is hopeful that they can develop a system that can inject up to 100,000 cells at once. Lee hopes that in the future NEP can be used to treat other forms of cancer.

"We hope that NEP could eventually become a tool for early cancer detection and treatment - for instance, inserting precise amounts of genes or proteins into stem cells or immune cells to guide their differentiation and changes - without the safety concerns caused by overdosing, and then placing the cells back in the body for cell-based therapy," Lee added.