The Magic Bullet: the challenging search for the holy grail of gene therapy
Channel: Faculty of Science Utrecht University
Date: 2017-05-22

This video provides a glimpse of the challenging search for the holy grail of medicine - the magic bullet: a delivery system for gene therapy to treat life-threatening diseases, which exclusively targets the ‘bad’ cells. Such a therapy would be extremely effective and have no side effects, but if we want gene therapy to work, how do we beat our own defence system?

The video was produced by the lab headed by Enrico Mastrobattista from the Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS) at Utrecht University. 

For several decades, gene therapy, personalised medicine and the magic bullet have made headlines in scientific magazines and the popular media. But how can we make it work?

How to design an elusive delivery system that can manage cell penetration and delivery of the RNA or DNA in exactly the right subcellular compartments of the cell? This is, in fact, precisely what viruses and some bacteria do. So why can’t we just copy them?   

We all want this magic bullet to be realised. Bright minds of various backgrounds are needed to transform gene therapy from a headline into an effective method of treatment.

This video about magic bullet research was made possible with input from members of the Mastrobattista Lab and financial support by the Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS).

Mastrobattista Lab website: https://www.uu.nl/en/research/pharmaceutics/research/enrico-mastrobattista

UIPS website: https://www.uu.nl/en/research/utrecht-institute-for-pharmaceutical-sciences-uips 

Produced by Sensu: http://www.sensu.org