What’s the Next Frontier in Medicine?<\/p>\n
These last couple of years, mRNA therapies have been a long-running great medical development, along with super-fast COVID-19 vaccines.\u00a0These vaccines already demonstrated what mRNA can do, but infectious disease is not the only thing mRNA can treat.\u00a0Now the challenge for researchers and biopharmaceutical companies is to make mRNA therapeutics for everything from cancer to genetic diseases to autoimmune diseases.<\/p>\n
Here in this blog, I write about the science behind mRNA therapeutics, what they’re being used for, where they’re going, and what a bright future it will be for medicine.<\/p>\n
What is mRNA?
\nmRNA: messenger RNA (mRNA) is a genetic code as a protein blueprint.\u00a0It’s made in the nucleus and delivers DNA from the DNA into the ribosomes, the building blocks that make proteins in cells.\u00a0mRNA is itself a kind of gatekeeper: it’s a transcription engine that takes DNA’s instructions to create proteins for other cells.<\/p>\n
And treatments: we can program mRNA to encode single proteins to combat illness.\u00a0Once put into the body, this mRNA instructs cells to create prophylactic proteins\u2014one form of personal, individual medicine.<\/p>\n
mRNA Vaccines: A Killer Insect New!
\nVaccines are perhaps the most famous use of mRNA.\u00a0Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines\u2014each uses mRNA to tell cells to manufacture the spike protein of the virus. SARS-CoV-2 is a novel new type of vaccine.\u00a0Where conventional vaccines are made from dead viruses or virus proteins, mRNA vaccines release synthetic mRNA to trigger an immune response.<\/p>\n
It’s mRNA vaccines for mRNA vaccines with the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and mRNA vaccines forever.\u00a0They’re designing mRNA vaccines for flu, Zika, HIV, and even cancer.\u00a0This pace of mRNA vaccine production during COVID-19 revealed just how adaptable and scalable this technology is and how it can reshape the design and delivery of vaccines.<\/p>\n
mRNA’s Future for Cancer Treatment?
\nmRNA treatment is the next frontier: cancer.\u00a0And chemotherapy and radiation, the old-school cures for cancer, which have very serious side effects because they’re not targeted.\u00a0Instead, mRNA treatments are highly specific drugs that prime the immune system to attack cancer cells.<\/p>\n
The mRNA could be harnessed to make tumor antigens for cancer immunotherapy that tell the immune system to attack the cancer cells.\u00a0Such a therapy could be personalized for each patient, using an mRNA vaccine against cancer cell mutations.\u00a0Even early clinical trials are a success, as mRNA vaccines launch immune responses against cancer cells.<\/p>\n
mRNA in Genetic Disorders
\nThe second new use of mRNA is to cure genetic pathology.\u00a0Deletion of copies of genes coding for the proteins we need explains genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and hemophilia.\u00a0mRNA therapy tries to implant living versions of these genes into the patient’s own cells.<\/p>\n
The synthetic mRNA produced in these treatments replaces the missing or damaged protein, “resolving” the genetic disease “for a while.”\u00a0If in traditional gene therapy you modified DNA in a patient’s cells, in mRNA therapy you just add artificial mRNA (a less lethal, less successful approach).<\/p>\n
If in cystic fibrosis, for example, the CFTR gene was absent and a bad protein was made, mRNA could be translated into instructions to cells to make a functional CFTR protein.\u00a0It would be a lifesaving enhancement for genetically damaged patients\u2014and maybe the cure will not last.<\/p>\n
mRNA-Based Therapeutics<\/span><\/a> for Autoimmune Diseases Instead, mRNA therapeutics could be used to develop drugs that tune the immune system increasingly less and less.\u00a0The mRNA might be reprogrammed, for instance, to produce proteins to regulate the immune system or to repair damaged tissue.\u00a0And they’re flirting with mRNA vaccines to introduce the antigen to the body and stave off autoimmune response.<\/p>\n The Overcoming of mRNA Delivery…\u00a0Step By Step! mRNA molecules are big and thick, and they get rapidly eaten up by the immune system of the body or blood-borne enzymes.\u00a0mRNA must fix it and produce it into the cells, and it does.\u00a0That’s usually done through lipid nanoparticles<\/a> <\/span>(LNPs), tiny rafts that cover the mRNA and let it flow into cells.<\/p>\n LNPs are already working in mRNA vaccines, but it’s a conundrum whether they could also work in other mRNA therapies (for chronic diseases especially).\u00a0You get the mRNA to the right cells, at the right levels, for the right duration, and then you’re good to go with the most efficacy and the least side effects.<\/p>\n The question now becomes how to make mRNA therapies actually effective, and lipid nanoparticles, viral vectors, and so on have the answer.<\/p>\n The Future of mRNA Therapeutics In addition to vaccines and the cure of disease, mRNA might even be used in personalized medicine.\u00a0If mRNA therapies could be customized to a patient’s genome, we might design very tailored treatments that are both more effective and less toxic than current therapies.<\/p>\n And just as there are mRNA therapies, so there are new therapies in regenerative medicine.\u00a0Inducing cells to make therapeutic proteins, mRNA could even initiate tissue repair, wound healing, and organ repair.<\/p>\n Conclusion As more are discovered and developed, mRNA therapies could be just the next frontier of medicine with their highly individualized, targeted, and potent treatments for any illness.\u00a0It’s a technology that will rewrite medicine and rewrite the futures of millions of patients worldwide.<\/p>\n Below is a table that summarizes some of the key services and products offered by Creative Biolabs on our mRNA platform.<\/p>\n
\nAutoimmune disorders result from the immune system attacking your own cells and tissues.\u00a0Cure diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis are just a few diseases for which the immune system doesn’t make sense.\u00a0It is the standard treatment for autoimmune conditions: suppression of the immune system, and infection is part of that process.<\/p>\n
\nThere are literally hundreds of possible mRNA therapies, but they still have a lot of work to do before they’re routine therapies.\u00a0This last problem is the biggest, invading cells with mRNA.<\/p>\n
\nThere are never-ending mRNA treatments.\u00a0Once the technology has a head start, there are likely to be many more potential treatments for intractable diseases.\u00a0These COVID-19 vaccines already begun the democratization of cancer immunotherapy, genetic disease, and autoimmune disease.<\/p>\n
\nmRNA therapies might also change medicine itself.\u00a0Vaccines, cancer immunotherapy, gene therapy\u2014there’s no end of areas of promise.\u00a0There’s more to do, implementation and stability among them, but the successes of mRNA vaccines are not the end of the story.<\/p>\n