WHEN it comes to gene therapy, it can’t get much simpler. Rather than using viruses, spheres of fat or nanoparticles to deliver DNA to cells, Jon Wolff’s team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has shown that a high-pressure injection of “naked” DNA straight into a vein is enough to get it into up to half of cells in the targeted muscles of rats, dogs and monkeys. “I admit I first thought it might blow up the vein,” he says. “But it worked and that changes everything.”
Wolff, who presented his results to the American Society of Gene Therapy last week,…
