{"id":227069,"date":"2025-12-16T13:48:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T23:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=227069"},"modified":"2025-12-16T18:35:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T04:35:38","slug":"jumping-dna-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2025\/12\/16\/jumping-dna-research\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Jumping DNA<\/abbr>’ innovation boosts gene therapy research at UH<\/abbr>"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> minute<\/span><\/span>
\"group
Jesse Owens (4th from left) with his lab team.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For nearly two decades, researcher Jesse Owens and his team at the University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span><\/abbr> at M\u0101noa John A. Burns School of Medicine<\/a> (JABSOM<\/abbr>) have been pursuing a bold vision: harnessing the natural ability of DNA<\/abbr> to move itself to treat genetic disease. Supported by a $2 million grant<\/a>, their latest breakthrough, published in Nucleic Acids Research<\/a><\/em>, marks a major step forward in precision gene therapy.<\/p>\n

In nature, transposons, sometimes called “selfish DNA<\/abbr>,” can jump around the genome, a phenomenon first discovered in corn by Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock. Owens\u2019 team repurposed this mechanism to deliver healthy genes into cells, replacing faulty ones.<\/p>\n

“What we\u2019ve done in our lab is take this natural jumping mechanism and use it to deliver healthy genes into the genome, essentially replacing a faulty one with a working copy,” Owens said.<\/p>\n

Early transposon systems were limited by random insertion, but Owens\u2019 lab engineered a way to target “safe harbor” regions of DNA<\/abbr>, avoiding cancer-related genes. Their results found an average of 1.2 successful insertions per cell, a more than thousandfold improvement over previous efforts.<\/p>\n

“That means nearly every cell we worked with received the new gene. It\u2019s a huge jump,” Owens said.<\/p>\n

With National Institutes of Health (NIH<\/abbr>) funding, the team plans to apply the technology to CAR<\/abbr> T-cell immunotherapy, potentially improving cancer treatments.<\/p>\n

“This research began here in Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>, and it\u2019s now on the brink of something that could impact lives worldwide,” Owens reflected. “It\u2019s exciting to see how far we\u2019ve come and how much farther we can go.”<\/p>\n

Read more at JABSOM<\/abbr><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa researchers use “jumping DNA<\/abbr>” to advance precision gene therapy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":227076,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1445,31,1467,1363,158,9],"class_list":["post-227069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-biotechnology","tag-john-a-burns-school-of-medicine","tag-manoa-excellence-in-research","tag-manoa-research","tag-publication","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/manoa-jabsom-jesse-owens-lab.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227069"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227087,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227069\/revisions\/227087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}