Engineering gas vesicles into CAR-T cells lets ultrasound track them inside living organs
NikoMcCarty · x · 2026-08-24
Niko McCarty highlights an imaging technology that could transform medicine. Over six CAR-T therapies have passed clinical trials and won FDA approval, yet trials only measure crude proxies—cells infused, tumor size over time, blood markers—while how many cells reach the tumor, how fast, and by what route remains a black box.
The key is gas vesicles: protein shells that trap gas. Engineered cells expressing them show up strongly on ultrasound, since everything else in the body is liquid and the gas acts as a contrast agent. Mikhail Shapiro's group at Caltech did exactly this: they used a lentivirus to insert "acoustic reporter genes" into T cells, injected them into mice with cancer, and watched their function inside opaque living organs.
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