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What can mRNA treat next?

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Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#21

Post by henron »

mvanaltvorst wrote: post #6
GEBBL wrote: post #2

I am so excited for the prospect of mRNA treatments, especially in the field of auto immune conditions like multiple sclerosis. Those scientists are heroes.

Are there any online resources where I could learn more about what mRNA treatments could theoretically cure? Take Hashimoto's disease for example, a disease where your thyroid gland slowly gets destroyed by your immune system. If I understand correctly, mRNA could stop your thyroid gland from getting destroyed in the first place, but it cannot regenerate the thyroid gland if it has already been destroyed. Is that cor…

My mental model is that in the next decade or so mRNA treatments could be effective if a disease can be treated through the expression of a small number of proteins. These proteins could either have a direct function or stimulate an immune response. I think your example works.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#22

Post by IAmGraydon »

usrusr wrote: post #19
GEBBL wrote: post #2

I am so excited for the prospect of mRNA treatments, especially in the field of auto immune conditions like multiple sclerosis. Those scientists are heroes.

How would the treating of auto immune work? In my understanding you can trick the immune system into putting yet anther protein on the "kill on sight" list, by forcing the protein's mRNA blueprints into the production pipeline of some cells and... waiting, assuming that the immune system does its thing. So far so good. But isn't an autoimmune problem an entry on the "kill list" that shouldn't be there? I understand h…

https://khn.org/morning-breakout/biontech-reports-breakthrou...

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#25

Post by antibuddy »

Steuard wrote: post #7

It's an indictment of something that we've had this amazing new tool for vaccine production in existence for a decade but we never even tried to use it for that until COVID because "vaccines typically don’t make much money" and "vaccines just aren’t that exciting" scientifically: "it’s nice and easy," to quote Rossi from the article. If it really does turn out that effective mRNA vaccines can be created in a straight…

This is not new at all. They tried to use mRNA vaccines for other diseases as well, but were never approved. This still holds true to this date.

edit: An example would be Dengvaxia.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#27

Post by Ericson2314 »

Steuard wrote: post #7

It's an indictment of something that we've had this amazing new tool for vaccine production in existence for a decade but we never even tried to use it for that until COVID because "vaccines typically don’t make much money" and "vaccines just aren’t that exciting" scientifically: "it’s nice and easy," to quote Rossi from the article. If it really does turn out that effective mRNA vaccines can be created in a straight…

Hehe try jumping in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Keynesian_economics rabbit hole, where perhaps the simplified jumping off point is "growth follows demand".

That fact that we fund all this basic research, but then can hardly be bothered with the development part of "R&D" seems like a pretty strong anecdote in favor.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#28

Post by DanielBMarkham »

jcims wrote: post #9

Many cancers exhibit immunosuppressive qualities that allow them to co-exist in a healthy immune system. It seems possible that mRNA-based therapies could be used to interfere with those mechanisms (eg binding to PD-L1, etc). The delivery mechanism for the mRNA appears to be the primary innovation and I wonder if it would be possible to target it at specific cells. In the cancer context if you could differentially ta…

I agree. It's easy to overstate things, but over the next several decades I could easily see a computational personalized approach to fighting cancer: read the unique immunosuppressive markers, sort out what's tractable and what's not, then deliver a mRNA payload for that particular cancer for that particular person.

For the incredibly small amount that I know, it looks like a game changer. (Like everything else, though, there's a long road from theory to practice. Implementation is going be very tough)

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#29

Post by maxerickson »

usrusr wrote: post #19
GEBBL wrote: post #2

I am so excited for the prospect of mRNA treatments, especially in the field of auto immune conditions like multiple sclerosis. Those scientists are heroes.

How would the treating of auto immune work? In my understanding you can trick the immune system into putting yet anther protein on the "kill on sight" list, by forcing the protein's mRNA blueprints into the production pipeline of some cells and... waiting, assuming that the immune system does its thing. So far so good. But isn't an autoimmune problem an entry on the "kill list" that shouldn't be there? I understand h…

They target signaling mechanisms that the immune system uses.

I think I don't understand it very well, but it seems one approach is to have the vaccine cause cells involved in an auto immune disorder to put a bunch of 'friend' markers on their surface. So the technology is that they can trigger protein expression and the medical approach is to get cells to express proteins that lessen immune activity against the cell.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#30

Post by coldcode »

mRNA seems almost like a biological programming language; if you can determine how to build a protein that triggers the body's immune system to attack something you want to destroy it's just a matter of design and testing. I wonder if you could build a real language that you could use to design a sequence and automate the testing.
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