Earlier this fall, the mRNA vaccines that proved essential in the global battle against Covid-19, were back in the headlines. Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine in recognition of their contributions to the bases of mRNA therapies and their interactions with the immune system. This foundational work was crucial to the rapid vaccine development during the pandemic.
Of course, as with most scientific breakthroughs, the creation of mRNA vaccines was a cumulative and collaborative effort spanning more than three decades. While intriguing to many medical scientists, for many years mRNA therapy was perceived as being impossible because of inflammatory reactions. This all changed when Karikó and Weissman discovered that chemically modifying transcribed mRNA would reduce the immune response. Their seminal work in the early to mid-2000’s reignited interest in mRNA therapies, spurring on the critical work that would enable the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines using this novel vaccine technology.
There is much to celebrate in Karikó’s and Weissman’s story. The power of persistence. Belief in yourself and your path in the face of skeptics. The vision of doing things differently. Millions of people struggle with diseases that they cannot manage. Medicines may be too expensive, or therapies may not even exist. New types of drugs, like mRNA, gene therapies, and oligonucleotides are changing the accessibility of medicines, bringing solutions for new diseases and pathogens and for old, incurable diseases.
Helping Enable Accessibility
DuPont’s products are used to separate target drug molecules from closely related impurities. This could be in raw materials used for vaccines or drug synthesis. Drug researchers and manufacturers need robust and selective purification strategies that are sensitive to minor differences in chemical and physical structure. We offer a range of chromatography resins to help companies optimize efficiency, resolution, and yield from benchtop to clinical trial to commercial scale.
The Emerging Category of Oligonucleotides
The oligonucleotide market is growing rapidly due to the ability of oligonucleotides to alter gene expression at the mRNA or DNA level. The largest class of therapies, AntiSense Oligonucleotides (ASO) therapies, works by silencing the production of mutated proteins that cause disease. The use of oligonucleotides is increasing in genetic research due to advances in CRISPR technology for DNA knockout studies. Growth in PCR-based diagnostics and microarray systems is increasing the demand for oligonucleotides as primers.
These oligonucleotide applications require precise targeting mechanisms for proper therapeutic or diagnostic function. The purification design impacts not only product yield but also drug performance, as impurities can cause adverse side reactions, may lower shelf life, and can lead to erroneous dosing. Given its role in drug economics, safety, and efficacy, proper design of the downstream process, including the purification train, is a critical part of drug manufacturing and making medicines accessible.
Persistence and Collaboration
New drug development is a difficult road filled with many challenges but, just like in Karikó’s and Weissman’s studies, the challenges are teaching moments and each learning, and each improvement gets closer to solution. DuPont believes in a Wellness-Optimized World, one where people have access to medicines, even in the face of deadly disease and we support drug developers for all stages of drug development, from benchtop research to commercial-scale manufacturing. As in the case of mRNA vaccines, it takes a supportive, interconnected team to bring new medicines to fruition.