Poster abstracts
Poster number 106 submitted by Mia Kordowski
Functionalized Engineered Extracellular Vesicles for targeted delivery to Interverbal Disc Cells
Mia Kordowski (Biophysics), Ana I. Salazar-Puerta (Department of Biomedical Engineering ), Mara A. Rincon-Benavides (Biophysics), Justin Richards (Department of Biomedical Engineering ), Nina Tang (Department of Biomedical Engineering ), Devina Purmessur (Department of Biomedical Engineering )
Abstract:
Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is a major contributor to chronic low back pain, a condition that is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Despite this, chronic low back pain is currently lacking treatment options that are safe and non-addictive. The IVD is comprised of an outer layer of fibrous annulus fibrosis cells (AF) and a gelatinous shock-absorbing core of nucleus pulposus cells (NP). Work from our lab and others, have identified key transcription factors to reprogram NP and AF cells in the IVD from an unhealthy phenotype to a healthy, pro-anabolic phenotype but lack specificity to NP or AF cells. The use of engineered extracellular vesicles (eEVs) as a non-viral gene-delivery method has many advantages like biocompatibility, range of size, and stability in biofluids. We propose to load eEVs with key developmental transcription factors and functionalize the eEVs with AF- or NP-specific transmembrane ligands to facilitate targeted delivery to either NP or AF cells. This functionalization of eEVs to specifically reprogram NP or AF cells allows for the treatment of the IVD with a single therapeutic intervention. Our results highlight the potential of using developmental transcription factors to reprogram diseased cells via eEVs and can be readily translated to other organ systems.
Keywords: Extracellular Vesicles, Low Back Pain, Cellular Reprogramming