Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have developed an efficient and effective delivery vehicle for gene therapy, and have used it to shrink tumors by nearly 90 percent in a pre-clinical model of triple-negative breast cancer. The new technique uses a hydrogel – a super-glue-like gel that spontaneously forms when two solutions mix – and self-assembled nanoparticles consisting of two microRNAs that suppress and target tumor tissue. This platform can be injected locally, allowing the researchers to increase dosage at the site of the tumor while decreasing the risk of the therapy accumulating in the kidneys, liver or other organs. In mouse models, the adhesive containing self-assembled nanoparticles injected using this approach has been far more potent, selective and specific to tumor cells than conventional chemotherapeutic drugs and have lengthened survival time. The team’s results are published in Nature Materials.