On a brisk morning in April, dozens of investors filed into a Marriott hotel conference hall in Kendall Square, the biotech hub of Cambridge, Mass., for the first Moderna Therapeutics platform science day. They gathered hoping to get a rare, inside look at the science behind what the start-up had long claimed to be a disruptive drug platform: carefully designed molecules called messenger RNA that prompt the body to make its own medicine. The concept has attracted billions in funding, but the company had largely kept details of how the technique works under wraps.
“Why are we so passionate about messenger RNA?” Moderna President Stephen Hoge asked the attentive audience. “It starts with the question of life,” he explained. “And in fact, all life that we know flows through messenger RNA. … In our language, mRNA is the software of life.”
Cells use mRNA to translate the static genes of DNA into dynamic proteins, involved in every bodily function, Hoge explained. Biotech companies make some of these proteins as drugs in large vats of genetically engineered cells. It’s a time-consuming and costly process.
Moderna offered a different proposition: What if instead, mRNA was given therapeutically? In theory, it could prompt proteins to be made in your body. It would put the drug factory inside you.
Image Credit: Ella Maru Studio
News This Week
Nanomedicine stops superbugs in their tracks
A team of researchers led by the University of South Australia has discovered a way to find and beat superbugs, providing a critical breakthrough against many deadly infectious diseases. Researchers from the ARC Centre [...]
The new field of sonogenetics uses sound waves to control the behavior of brain cells
What if you didn’t need surgery to implant a pacemaker on a faulty heart? What if you could control your blood sugar levels without an injection of insulin, or mitigate the onset of a [...]
Guided by AI, robotic platform automates molecule manufacture
Guided by artificial intelligence and powered by a robotic platform, a system developed by MIT researchers moves a step closer to automating the production of small molecules that could be used in medicine, solar [...]
Damaged hearts rewired with carbon nanotube fibers
Thin, flexible fibers made of carbon nanotubes have now proven able to bridge damaged heart tissues and deliver the electrical signals needed to keep those hearts beating. Scientists at Texas Heart Institute (THI) report they have [...]
A new way to hoard resources in nano-sized factories targeted for biotechnology
The lab of Cheryl Kerfeld at Michigan State University has created a synthetic nano-sized factory, based on natural ones found in bacteria. This research could someday lead to new medical, industrial or bioenergy [...]
Scientists develop novel nano-vaccine for melanoma
Melanoma in skin biopsy with H&E stain — this case may represent superficial spreading melanoma. Credit: Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0 Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a novel nano-vaccine for melanoma, the most aggressive [...]
Controlling the shape-shifting skeletons of cells
You know you have a skeleton, but did you know that your cells have skeletons, too? Cellular skeletons, or cytoskeletons, are shapeshifting networks of tiny protein filaments, enabling cells to propel themselves, carry cargo, [...]
Google Maps for tissue – Resembles Google Maps in 3D mode
Modern light microscopic techniques provide extremely detailed insights into organs, but the terabytes of data they produce are usually nearly impossible to process. New software, developed by a team led by MDC scientist Dr. [...]
Gold glue really does bond nanocages, ‘contradicting’ logic
It has long been known that gold can be used to do things that philosophers have never even dreamed of. The Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow has [...]
A ‘cancer lab’ on chip
Finding out you have cancer is bad enough, but to then have to go to hospital for a painful and invasive biopsy to try to identify the exact type of tumor can be deeply [...]
Updated – Worldwide Press for “Human Brain/Cloud Interface”
“We’ll have nanobots that… connect our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud. Our thinking will be a…. biological and non-biological hybrid.” Ray Kurzweil, TED 2014 UPDATE - August 6 2019 Since [...]
Six paths to the nonsurgical future of brain-machine interfaces
DARPA has awarded funding to six organizations to support the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program, first announced in March 2018. Battelle Memorial Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Palo Alto [...]
Neuromorphic Computing – Breakthrough Innovations for Society or Pandora’s Box?
Source: Bold Business. Follow them on twitter. Though you may not realize it, more than 40,000 computer-brain interfaces have already been employed in healthcare today. Thus, to say computer-brain interfaces are something new would [...]
Transforming advanced nanoscience data into interactive art
It is hard to imagine just how small one nanometer—one-billionth of a meter—really is. Ten hydrogen atoms in a row are one nanometer long. For perspective, consider that a sheet of paper is 75,000 [...]
Microrobots show promise for treating tumors
Targeting medical treatment to an ailing body part is a practice as old as medicine itself. A Band-Aid is placed on a skinned knee. Drops go into itchy eyes. A broken arm goes into [...]
Nanoparticles Heal Spinal Cord Injuries
The zealous immune response to injuries is known to cause paralyzing damage in spinal cord injury (SCI). Engineers have now created unique nanoparticles that redirect immune cells away from the spinal cord, promoting regeneration [...]
Leave A Comment