Targeted delivery of diverse biomolecules with engineered bacterial nanosyringes
The Photorhabdus virulence cassette is a microbial nanosyringe that can be engineered to deliver protein cargos into human cells. Here we further modify this system to incorporate exogenous cargos and targeting moieties in vitro. We show that this method, termed SPEAR, enables loading of different types of cargo (including folded ribonucleoproteins and single-stranded DNA) and targeting of defined cell types both in vitro and in vivo.
Authors
- Joseph Kreitz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4290-5353)
- Rhiannon K. Macrae (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7850-9056)
- Victoria Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5999-5562)
- Mirco Friedrich (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6401-3623)
- Feng Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0178-7995)
- Julie Pham (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5678-5220)
Institutions
- Broad Institute (US)
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research (US)
- Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences (US)
- Camber Collective (United States) (US)
- Harvard Stem Cell Institute (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Biotechnology
- Published
- 2025-08-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-025-02774-x
- Citations
- 8
- Primary Topic
- Vibrio bacteria research studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 14.38
Funders
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Broad Institute