Marc Güell
Coordinator of the Translational Synthetic Biology research group and full professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF)
The study is very interesting. Virus engineering for gene therapy has been very successful. Very useful vectors can be made. Examples are lentiviruses or adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) currently used in therapies in patients.
What is very new is that in this study they use a bacterial virus instead of viruses that infect mammals. In addition, it has the property that it can package a lot of DNA (10 times more than lentiviruses and 20 times more than AAVs). This can be very interesting for transferring large genes or complex genetic circuits.
In terms of limitations, the efficiency in in vivo (and ex vivo) situations compared to classical platforms needs to be seen, as well as how biodistribution can be controlled. In addition, when packaging DNA, there is always a risk of insertion (especially if the DNA is so large). This needs to be measured in animal models.
In any case, I think it is a very interesting system. Viruses are very sophisticated molecular machines that now allow us very important levels of engineering.