Happy to share our Review article just published in Trends in Biotechnology: “In vivo translation of DNA origami: a virus-like particle design framework.”

DNA origami gives us extraordinary control over nanoscale structure, enabling programmable shape, cargo loading, and ligand display. These capabilities have fueled exciting advances in vaccines, therapeutics, and targeted drug delivery.

But translating DNA origami into in vivo applications requires more than building increasingly sophisticated nanostructures. The real challenge is engineering materials that can survive, navigate, and function within complex biological environments.

In this review, we propose a virus-inspired framework for thinking about DNA origami design. We organize design principles into three interdependent modules—a genome (structure and dynamics), envelope (surface chemistry), and spike (ligand display)—and argue that these elements should be co-designed, rather than optimized independently. We also discuss future directions, including expanding the envelope and spike design toolkit, building combinatorial libraries, leveraging computational analysis, and developing adaptive architectures that respond to changing biological environments.

We hope this framework contributes to the broader effort to make DNA nanostructures function robustly in vivo

Huge thanks to a great team — Kousha Kamal, Eric Chiu, Ziji Guo, and Kim Tsoi.