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What can mRNA treat next?

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Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#61

Post by arrosenberg »

coldcode wrote: post #30

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.

You could, but keep in mind mRNA occurs in 3D and thermodynamic and kinetic forces play a huge role in biochemistry, so it’s quite a bit more complicated than your average program.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#62

Post by [deleted] »

ecedeno wrote: post #53

Moderna has a public development pipeline. It shows they are working on, among other things, an HIV vaccine and vaccines/therapies for multiple types of cancer. https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline

[deleted]

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#64

Post by est31 »

ecedeno wrote: post #53

Moderna has a public development pipeline. It shows they are working on, among other things, an HIV vaccine and vaccines/therapies for multiple types of cancer. https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline

Plus a flu vaccine:

> mRNA vaccines [...] generate a much stronger immune response than responses that are generated to the protein in a normal flu vaccine [...]

> One limitation of the current flu vaccines is that they take about six months to develop, meaning scientists must choose which strains they think will be prevalent in the next flu season — even before the current one is over. So by the time the vaccines are ready for distribution, a different strain may have emerged as the better target.

> An mRNA flu vaccine, on the other hand, can be developed in about a month or so, giving researchers much more time to determine which strains to protect against.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/11/mrna-flu-sh...

The flu vaccine seems to me to have a better chance of working than an HIV vaccine because we have been trying for decades to come up with one for HIV, without any success at all. I'm not saying that their attempts won't work either, but it's more of a bet than a flu vaccine. An iterative improvement on the existing flu vaccines would still be very helpful.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#65

Post by JPLeRouzic »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #35

There are a lot of folks excited about mRNA as a "programming language" for the body. And it kind of is, but it's more complicated than that. The critical thing is that mRNA is extremely immunogenic -- that is, it provokes a strong immune response. Makes sense, since evolutionarily when we had little particles delivering RNA strands to our cells, they we viruses. So, that's great for vaccine production. Not so great…

> We (probably) can't just program it to produce that protein, because it would also train the immune system to target that protein.

I am not a scientist but my understanding is that the immune system targets only what it is trained against. It doesn't target anything which is non-self without being trained beforehand.

IMO if it was otherwise there would be no need for vaccine.

So I think that it is quite feasible to make a cell to produce a new protein, for example Zolgensma [0] works that way: It creates a new gene (hence a new protein) to replace a deficient one.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onasemnogene_abeparvovec

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#66

Post by gfodor »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #35

There are a lot of folks excited about mRNA as a "programming language" for the body. And it kind of is, but it's more complicated than that. The critical thing is that mRNA is extremely immunogenic -- that is, it provokes a strong immune response. Makes sense, since evolutionarily when we had little particles delivering RNA strands to our cells, they we viruses. So, that's great for vaccine production. Not so great…

Depending on your defect, CF can either under-produce CFTR, produce deficient CFTR, or produce no CFTR. I’d imagine each of these scenarios has different viability for mRNA theraputics.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#67

Post by jcims »

School-Cotton wrote: post #33
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…

Possibly naive question: if you can differentially target any particular thing to cancer cells specifically, why not just deliver poison to kill the cells directly? I.e. chemotherapy but without any of the nasty side effects.

Not naive at all. I didn't word my question well as my interest is broadly if this new technology gives us any more ability to differentiate the delivery, either by selecting for cancer cells or by only 'activating' within cells that are cancerous.

In general there are a number of 'targeted' therapies being developed that don't specifically target the cancer cell, but try to make life more difficult for the cancer by broadly impacting a cell's ability to hide, replicate and accumulate...features that the rest of a healthy human tissue is less dependent upon.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#68

Post by lukeschlather »

Scientifically and medically, vaccines seem extraordinarily exciting as a simple tool that can permanently eliminate problems. Treatments sound very exciting if I were running a business, but scientifically less so.

I'm really glad that we've developed these great mRNA vaccines, and I hope that a business drive for recurring revenue doesn't chase people back to merely looking for treatments.

Re: What can mRNA treat next?

#69

Post by lisper »

est31 wrote: post #64
ecedeno wrote: post #53

Moderna has a public development pipeline. It shows they are working on, among other things, an HIV vaccine and vaccines/therapies for multiple types of cancer. https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline

Plus a flu vaccine: > mRNA vaccines [...] generate a much stronger immune response than responses that are generated to the protein in a normal flu vaccine [...] > One limitation of the current flu vaccines is that they take about six months to develop, meaning scientists must choose which strains they think will be prevalent in the next flu season — even before the current one is over. So by the time the vaccines ar…

> by the time the vaccines are ready for distribution, a different strain may have emerged as the better target

I have never understood this. How many strains are there? I thought there were only like 4 or so. Why don't they just do them all every year?

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