A perspective piece published online today in Science by Jonathan Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Matthew Brier, who recently earned his doctorate in chemical engineering at Rensselaer, explores the potential of emerging approaches for the remote activation of cell signaling to induce gene expression and the production of specific proteins.

“Remote modulation of cell signaling has biological ramifications across the cellular, tissue, and organismal levels, with applications as diverse as medicine and biomanufacturing,” the authors wrote.

In the article, Dordick and Brier discuss various routes to use remote means to activate genes, including electrical, mechanical, optical, and magnetic field-driven methods. For example, they discuss newly published research by Krawczyk et al. that demonstrates the novel use of electrogenetics to stimulate the production of protein within human embryonic kidney cells and to also control the secretion of insulin from an implant made of monoclonal pancreatic β cell line coupled with vesicles capable of secreting insulin.

In the perspective, Dordick and Brier also examine the current merits and constraints of using optical, mechanical, and magnetic stimuli to induce cell signaling.  

For instance, previous research done by Dordick, Jeffrey Friedman at Rockefeller University, and Sarah Stanley at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, demonstrated that the transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) ion channel could be opened and closed by activating a tethered ferritin — a protein that contains iron oxide — with an external magnetic field. That research was supported by an ongoing National Institutes of Health grant.

With the support of an ongoing National Science Foundation grant, Dordick and Stanley are now exploring the mechanisms behind magnetogenetics. Through the use of cell-based and biochemical methods, the researchers are examining multiple possible physical, thermal, and chemical processes.

Dordick and Brier submit that future research into these methods could prove beneficial in the search for new and improved medical therapeutics.

“Research into synergistic use of these approaches could be the next step,” they wrote. “For example, self-contained implants could act as multimodal monitoring and treatment devices for targeted diseases that have proven elusive to the current toolbox of modern medicine.”