mRNA Vaccine Booster

About

Background Over the last two decades, there has been a rising development of new generation biopharmaceuticals, such as peptides, proteins, DNAs, and RNAs. Among these candidates, RNA drugs, especially messenger RNA (mRNA) drugs, have received growing attention due to their potential in gene therapy, regenerative medicine, cancer treatment, and infectious disease prevention. mRNA drugs are in vitro synthesized mRNAs that can produce missing or defective proteins once delivered into cells. Smart mRNA drugs that contain sensing domains can even sense intracellular biomolecules to selectively produce proteins in target cells, achieving targeted delivery of proteins. However, a constraining factor for the use of mRNA drugs is the innate low stability of mRNA. As mRNAs naturally degrades in the biological system, high dose or repeated administration is commonly required. Technology Overview We found artificial sequences and chemically modified nucleotides that can enhance mRNAs performance (other than Poly(A) tail), and effectively enhance protein expression of both simple and smart model mRNA drugs, with the effect being cell type independent. As the artificial sequences can be simply incorporated into the DNA templates by regular PCR reactions, no additional cost is needed for synthesizing mRNA drugs carrying the artificial sequences. Therefore, these artificial sequences can be broadly used on the existing and future mRNA drugs for enhancement of efficacy and for reduction of cost.