Team:NJU-China

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Opium War

Project Description

As is known to all, drugs are extremely harmful both to our mental and physical health. Among different kinds of drugs, opioid drug is one of the most widely used and hazardous drugs, which includes heroin and morphine. There are several withdraw methods being applied currently, such as natural withdraw, non-drug withdraw and drug withdraw method, each of which has its side effects. Our project is exploring a brand new way to help morphine addicts rehabilitate and prevent relapse.

Cell-derived exosomes have been demonstrated to be efficient carriers of small RNAs to neighbouring or distant cells. Hopefully, we intend to employ modified exosomes expressing the neuron-specific rabies viral glycoprotein (RVG) peptide on the membrane surface to deliver opioid receptor mu (MOR) siRNA into the brain to treat morphine addiction.Through targeting experiment, we have demonstrated that siRNA can be efficiently packaged into exosomes and specifically delivered to N2a neurons(in vitro) or mice brain tissues(in vivo). Functionally, siRNA-loaded RVG exosomes significantly reduced MOR mRNA and protein levels in mice. What’s more, we are thrilled to find out that treatment of MOR siRNA delivered by RVG exosomes strongly inhibited morphine relapse by down-regulating the expression of MOR receptor. These experiments demonstrate that siRNA RVG exosomes can specifically target to brain tissue and efficiently prevent morphine relapse.