Popping a pill to regulate therapeutic protein delivery

Abstract

The enormous potential for secreted protein therapeutics delivered using gene therapy approaches cannot be completely fulfilled until the kinetics of protein release can be controlled. Under natural conditions, some proteins, such as erythropoietin, are released steadily: others, such as insulin, need to be released in short bursts in response to stimuli. Following encouraging progress in the development of their ARGENT technology for slow, controlled protein delivery over a period of days 1 Stewart A. Orally activated protein therapy heads towards clinical trials. Mol. Med. Today. 1998; 4: 95 Google Scholar , ARIAD Gene Therapeutics (Cambridge, MA, USA) has now published proof-of-concept of a new technology that enables therapeutic protein delivery over a timescale of a few hours 2 Rivera V.M. et al. Regulation of protein secretion through controlled aggregation in the endoplasmic reticulum. Science. 2000; 287: 826-830 Crossref PubMed Scopus (272) Google Scholar .