A New Way to Synthesize mRNA’s Protein Enhancing Effectiveness of Cancer and COVID-19 Treatment
A team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has recently developed a new technology that could increase synthetic mRNA’s protein production efficiency, thereby strengthening the efficiency of cancer treatments and COVID-19 vaccines.
The finding was recently published in the online version of the journal Molecular Therapy—Nucleic Acids.
mRNA is a genetic material replicated from the nucleus of DNA. It functions as a messenger and instructs the body to produce certain proteins.
Synthesis of mRNAs is an emerging technology that has been used to produce vaccines and medicines in recent years, which can instruct the production of protein from the cells for treating cancers and fighting viruses.
However, as with traditional medicines, patients need to be injected with high dosages in order to produce sufficient proteins, and repeated injections are needed.
The HKUST team spent three years researching and improving the mRNA technology, testing different combinations of the mRNA tails’ sequences.
Prof. Becki Kuang Yi, assistant professor at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at HKUST, who leads the team, explained that mRNAs could produce proteins and antigens in the body—then antigens produce antibodies. Efficiency is higher when more proteins are produced.
She mentioned that in the past, scientists focused on studying the mRNA’s “head” and “center,” but seldom researched the mRNA’s “tail” sequences.
While the chemical substance “purine A” is usually used as a tail, the research team added the chemical substance “cytosine C” to reduce decomposition time and produce more proteins.
The results showed that the new optimized tail sequences could produce three to 10 times as many proteins as the unoptimized tail sequences, which are commonly used for synthetic mRNAs in both human cells and mice.
With the new addition to the tail sequence, the duration of protein production is doubled. While the prior production method stays one day in the body, the production of the new optimized tail sequences stays effective for 48 hours and vanishes completely in 72 hours, making the treatment more effective and durable.
Kuang said that different mRNAs are benefited from the optimized tail sequence while the cost would not be increased.
As well, the new technology could be used with the current one—even though the amount of mRNA is halved, more protein could still be produced—hence it is believed that the cost of treatment could be lowered in the future.
She mentioned that in collaboration with Sun Yat-Sen University, her team is now exploring the uses of mRNA cancer vaccines on animals.
She also looks forward to collaborating with pharmaceutical companies to transfer the new technology into clinical experiments, hoping to increase the efficiency of the medicine threefold while keeping the cost unchanged, “patients feel less pain when fewer injections are needed.”
