Jacob Kimmel

They're just too small.

And then the other classic modalities we have are recombinant proteins.

We make a protein like a hormone in a big vat.

We grow it in some Chinese hamster ovary cells.

We extract it.

We inject it into you.

This is how, for instance, like human insulin works that we make today.

Or you make antibodies, antibodies produced by the immune system.

These run around and find proteins that have a particular sequence.

They buy into it.

And often they just like stop it from working by glomming a big thing onto the side.

So those are too big to get through the cell membrane, so then they can't actually get to a TF or do anything directly.

So we take these bank shots.

So what changes that today and why I think it's pretty exciting is we now have new nucleic acid and genetic medicines where you can, for instance, deliver RNAs to a cell that can get through using tricks like lipid nanoparticles.

You wrap them in a fat bubble.

It looks kind of like a cell membrane.

It can fuse with a cell, put the mRNAs in the cytosol.

You can make a copy of a transcription factor there.

And then it translocates to the nucleus the same way a natural one would and exerts its effect.

And likewise, there are other ways to do this using things like viral vectors.