Maria Vitória Bentley stood in a London auditorium and described how nanoparticles the size of molecules could rewrite the future for 190 million people living with psoriasis. The Brazilian researcher and her team at USP's NanoGeneSkin laboratory in Ribeirão Preto have spent two decades engineering a solution to a seemingly impossible problem: how to slip healing RNA past the body's defenses and into damaged skin cells, where it can silence the genes driving chronic disease.
The work matters because psoriasis and vitiligo affect roughly 2 to 3 percent of the global population—about 5 million Brazilians among them. Both are autoimmune diseases rooted in genetic overexpression: psoriasis floods the body with inflammatory cytokines like TNF-alpha that trigger severe skin lesions, while vitiligo destroys melanocytes, the pigment-producing cells that give skin its color. Until now, treatments have relied on drugs that flood the entire body, causing widespread side effects while targeting a single problem. Bentley's approach is different. It is, as she puts it, "precision nanomedicine."
The nanoparticles themselves are elegant structures built from lipids—fats—organized into liquid crystals with an internal architecture as orderly as a crystal but as fluid as oil. This unique design solves two biological barriers at once. RNA, the molecule used to silence disease genes, is fragile and breaks down rapidly in the body. The nanoparticles encapsulate and protect it. And the skin is engineered to keep things out. The nanoparticles slip through.
Inside the nanoparticles travels small interfering RNA, or siRNA—a synthetic molecule that hunts down the messenger RNA responsible for producing inflammatory cytokines. Before the harmful protein can be made, the siRNA degrades the blueprint. It's like intercepting and destroying a manufacturing order before it reaches the factory floor. The result is a return to baseline, healthy inflammation levels without the collateral damage of systemic drugs.
This platform, developed under the auspices of the National Institute of Science and Technology for Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, has already demonstrated success across three research lines that Bentley presented at FAPESP Week London. The team has shown the nanoparticles can achieve effective gene silencing. They have enhanced RNA release inside cells using physical methods like light—a process called photoactivation. And they have done all this while keeping the approach rooted in one guiding principle: identify the specific overexpressed gene, design a complementary RNA to silence it, and deliver it precisely where it's needed.
The 20-year journey from concept to clinical presentation reflects the patience required to bridge a gap that has stumped dermatology and immunology for decades. Psoriasis alone costs global health systems billions in treatment and lost productivity. Vitiligo robs people not just of pigment but often of confidence and psychological wellbeing. For millions waiting for a treatment that works without reshaping their entire body's chemistry, the nanoparticles emerging from Ribeirão Preto represent something rare: a approach tailored to the disease itself, not imposed upon it.