Heczey Lab

Please, find us on @bluesky . I will not support a platform whose owner, an unelected official, is actively and ruthlessly damaging the US government including the NIH.

How #scientists make #breakthroughs: a journey to finding a promising method to address #CARTcell challenges in treating #solidTumors. @HeczeyAndras ZP Sumazin, C Rooney, M Brenner @davidsteffin @bcmhouston @TexasChildrens @CAGTHouston @Nature blogs.bcm.edu/2025/01/28/fro…

Eight years of legal fighting came down to this one moment nature.com/articles/d4158…

@nano_bennett Great to have you, Zack.

I joined @HeczeyLab last month as a postdoc & last week they published an exceptional paper in Nature on solid tumor responses with CAR T cells. Excited to be on the team!

@NIH @BCMCancerCenter @TexasChildrens @Nature @CPRITTexas @CAGTHouston

Collectively, these results demonstrate that IL-15 increases the expansion, intratumoural survival and antitumour activity of GPC3 CAR T cells in patients. @NIH @BCMCancerCenter @TexasChildrens @Nature @CPRITTexas

IL15 increases the expansion of CAR T cells and induces antitumor responses in patients with GPC3+ solid tumors (i.e. liver cancer). nature.com/articles/s4158…

Thrilled to share our latest work on lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery of a stable CRISPR-Cas9 ribonucleoprotein (RNP) for in vivo genome editing, now published @NatureBiotech! 🧬 nature.com/articles/s4158… In this paper, we first engineered robust, efficient, and stable CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing enzymes, iGeoCas9s, through #directedevolution of Cas9 from Geobacillus stearothermophilus (GeoCas9). We then developed an LNP-based delivery platform that successfully encapsulates and delivers iGeoCas9 RNP to various cell lines, achieving high-efficiency genome editing in vitro, including homology-directed repair (HDR) via codelivery of RNP and ssDNA templates. In the end, we demonstrated that different LNP formulations enabled tissue-specific genome editing in the liver and lungs after single intravenous injections of iGeoCas9 RNP–LNP complexes without triggering detectable immune responses. Overall, our results show that stable Cas9 RNP–LNP complexes can be a robust alternative to mRNA–LNP delivery and expand the therapeutic potential of CRISPR genome editing. Our previous study @CellCellPress illustrated why our engineered iGeoCas9 exhibits dramatic improvements in its genome editing function. The high protein stability and desired negative charge density are the key to the successful development of the LNP delivery strategy for iGeoCas9 RNPs, which outperforms mRNA+sgRNA codelivery by LNPs for genome editing. We believe this LNP delivery platform can be further extended to other editing tools, such as base editors and prime editors. Huge thanks to my collaborators @doudna_lab and in the Murthy lab for making this possible! @igisci @berkeleyMCB

BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 #NobelPrize in Physics to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

BREAKING NEWS The 2024 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

@EvanWeberPhD I use positive (for people who usually discuss important stuff) and negative (for random listserv based group emails) sorter rules to move emails to specific folders. Only read certain folders usually.... Totally agree with your concern btw.

ADVICE NEEDED 👇 Of the many emails I receive each day, about 50-75% are junk. Most go to my junk folder, but still, I feel like I am constantly marking spam emails. Does anyone have a good automated solution for this? I need my inbox to be pristine, don't @ me!

Please, support our efforts at Swim Across America which is raising funds for cancer research. swimacrossamerica.org/site/TR/OpenWa… I also hope not to drown.... :)