Anew messenger RNA (mRNA) design tool addresses two significant
obstacles to the therapeutic use of mRNA: effective protein
expression and structural stability.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought a breakthrough in the medicinal use
of mRNA. The emerging and rapidly developing field of RNA medicine
also includes using mRNA to deliver therapeutic antibodies and
anti-cancer drugs. However, clinical use of mRNA is challenging
because of the low stability of mRNA molecules, the need for
effective expression of therapeutic proteins from mRNA, and the
need for modulating the immune response to foreign RNA. Because a
codon of three adjacent nucleotides encodes each amino acid, and
because of redundancies in this genetic code, the number of
candidate mRNA molecules for expressing a given protein is vast and
unsearchable with conventional tools.
A recent report in Nature provides a new mRNA design tool that
considers both the need for optimal codon usage for protein
expression and structural stability. The new mRNA design tool
identified mRNA candidates for expressing the SARS-CoV-2 Spike
protein. The use of the tool may extend to most real world
applications of mRNA, and may even be relevant for the nucleotide
editing tool CRISPR-Cas or self-amplifying RNA.
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