What is a DNA switch for gene therapy?
A plain-language guide to regulatory DNA switches, why gene therapies need them, and how OncoSwitch designs them with AI and MPRA.
What is a DNA switch?
A DNA switch is a short stretch of regulatory DNA placed in front of a therapeutic gene. It decides whether the cell reads that gene. OncoSwitch designs switches that stay off in healthy cells and turn on in tumor cells.
Why do gene therapies need a switch?
A therapy delivered into the body can reach healthy cells as well as the tumor. If the therapeutic gene is active in both, healthy tissue is exposed too. A tumor-selective switch keeps the therapy silent where it is not wanted.
How does a switch know it is inside a tumor cell?
Tumor cells have distinct patterns of regulatory protein activity. A switch contains binding sites arranged so that only the right combination of those proteins activates it. Healthy cells lack that combination, so the switch stays off.
How does OncoSwitch design switches?
Physics-informed AI designs and ranks candidate switches. Massively parallel reporter assays (MPRA) then test thousands of designs at once in tumor and non-tumor cells, and every result trains the next round of designs.
Does a switch change the therapy itself?
No. The switch sits in the therapy's DNA in front of the payload, so it can be used with existing delivery systems such as AAV, LNP and CAR-T without changing the payload.
What stage is OncoSwitch at?
OncoSwitch is preclinical. A computational prototype is complete and switches are moving into biological validation, starting with liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma) models.