What if the real bottleneck in mRNA medicines isn’t discovering new payloads… but building the right delivery vehicle?
What if the real bottleneck in mRNA medicines isn’t discovering new payloads… but building the right delivery vehicle?
When we talk about drug discovery, the spotlight often shines on what molecule to deliver.
But for mRNA therapeutics, a real challenge lies in the how. Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are the vessels that carry fragile RNA to its destination - and getting their design right is every bit as complex as designing the drug itself.
Think about the questions researchers face:
- How do you precisely tune LNP size and morphology?
- How do subtle formulation changes ripple into efficacy and safety?
- How do you navigate a huge parameter space that often involves tens of interdependent process variables?
These aren’t just lab curiosities - they are some of the toughest questions at the heart of scaling mRNA medicines.
During my recent visit to MIT, I had the chance to dive into these questions with Giovanni, Cedric, and Aniket from the Myerson group.
We explored both the experimental hurdles of producing highly effective LNPs and the decision-making and modeling frameworks needed to translate them into robust manufacturing processes.
Their recent work is an inspiring example of how academic research is bridging the gap: from pushing the science of LNP assembly to enabling rational, predictive control over drug delivery vehicles. This is exactly the type of progress that will shape the next generation of mRNA therapeutics.
They’re very excited about this research and eager to exchange ideas with others working on similar challenges - if this resonates, I’d encourage you to reach out to them.
For those interested in diving deeper into the science, here’s their excellent recent paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.5c09800
