Messenger RNA, or mRNA, represents a relatively new class of therapeutics with the potential to prevent and treat a wide range of diseases. A well-known success story is of the mRNA vaccines that controlled the COVID-19 pandemic, which has fueled enthusiasm for the field. But biotechs are also developing mRNA candidates for several other infectious diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, as well for cancer, autoimmune and allergic diseases. However, delivering nucleic acid therapeutics can be challenging, since mRNA cannot get into cells on its own.
Messenger RNA, or mRNA, represents a relatively new class of therapeutics with the potential to prevent and treat a wide range of diseases. A well-known success story is of the mRNA vaccines that controlled the COVID-19 pandemic, which has fueled enthusiasm for the field. But biotechs are also developing mRNA candidates for several other infectious diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, as well for cancer, autoimmune and allergic diseases. However, delivering nucleic acid therapeutics can be challenging, since mRNA cannot get into cells on its own. “Nucleic acid therapeutics can be incredibly fragile,” Thomas Madden, CEO of Acuitas Therapeutics, told BioWorld. “When injected into the body without a delivery system, messenger RNA, for example, is rapidly destroyed.”
Blood biomarkers have been found in patients hospitalized with acute COVID-19 that are predictive of the cognitive defects of long COVID. Post COVID-19 deficits in cognition, including brain fog, are common and debilitating. They are also clinically complex, with both objective and subjective components. In the U.K., one in eight patients received their first ever neurological or psychiatric diagnosis within six months following COVID-19.
Wistar Institute of Anatomy & Biology has synthesized new 3C-like proteinase (3CLpro; Mpro; nsp5) (SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19 virus) inhibitors for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19).
Biontech SE and Pfizer Inc. filed a petition with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board for an inter partes review against Moderna Inc., the latest move in an ongoing patent battle over the mRNA technology used to develop COVID-19 vaccines.
Viral proteases are well-established therapeutic targets in HIV and hepatitis C virus infections. Following the recent COVID-19 pandemic, one of the strategies in place is SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) inhibition, given the crucial role of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro in the replication of the virus.
Research led by investigators at Ghent University in Belgium showed dysregulation of the complement part of the immune system, regulated by the pro-inflammatory protein interleukin (IL)-6, is a key driver of severe COVID-19 and a good target for drugs to treat the effects of the disease. Writing in the Aug. 23, 2023, issue of Science Translational Medicine, the researchers also described a cellular map of the alterations seen in the complement system during COVID-19 related respiratory deterioration for use in future research.
The COVID-19 pandemic might be officially over, but future variants could still pose a threat, and serious health consequences of the causative virus continue to arise, a fact that has prompted the U.S. government to offer Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. about $326 million to develop and manufacture a next-generation COVID-19 monoclonal antibody therapy.
A study from Weill Cornell Medicine and The Jackson Laboratory has described the epigenetic mark SARS-CoV-2 left on immune system stem cells in the most severe cases of COVID-19 early in the pandemic, before the development of vaccines. In their work published in Cell on Aug. 18, 2023, the researchers presented a new methodology to analyze the epigenetic changes in monocytes and circulating hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) that give rise to monocytes. That allowed corresponding author Steven Josefowicz and his colleagues to see if there were already changes induced by COVID-19 before HSPCs differentiated into monocytes.
