China News Service, Shanghai, March 26 (Reporter Chen Jing) Scientific research has discovered that there is a "middleman" between DNA and protein, which is responsible for transmitting information, and mRNA is this "middleman." mRNA technology has attracted widespread attention as an emerging therapeutic strategy. Combining advanced mRNA technology platforms with AI algorithms and applying them to the drug and vaccine research and development process can greatly increase speed and efficiency and change the industrial development pattern.
During a visit on the 26th, the reporter learned that Chinese innovative pharmaceutical companies are developing innovative mRNA drugs and vaccines with independent intellectual property rights based on their independent and controllable mRNA technology platform, focusing on the "blue ocean" where there is huge clinical demand but lack of targeted drugs. .
Luo Yongqing, CEO of Genting Xinyao, revealed in an interview that day that through previous cooperation, the company had upgraded while digesting and absorbing the mRNA technology of Canada's Providence Therapeutics. Today, the R&D team is rapidly advancing multiple projects using the clinically proven mRNA technology platform, and its self-developed mRNA vaccine pipeline has entered a period of rapid development. He told reporters that the annual production capacity of the mRNA vaccine GMP ("Good Manufacturing Practice") production base in Jiashan, Zhejiang can reach 700 million doses.
Efficient delivery technology guarantees the efficacy of mRNA therapy. In this regard, Luo Yongqing said that in addition to utilizing the introduced delivery technology, the company is also independently researching and developing a new generation of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery system to enhance cell-mediated immune response.
It is understood that, in theory, mRNA can express any protein and can be explored to treat almost all protein-based diseases. Rich targets and high safety are the outstanding advantages of mRNA drugs and vaccines. Li Xiuling, general manager of the Shanghai Institute of Biological Products, once said that as a universal platform technology, mRNA technology has a wide range of application scenarios and huge potential. The collaborative promotion of key core technology research, independent technology development and product transformation and application of mRNA will be instrumental in enhancing technological innovation in the biomedical industry. capacity and ensuring people's health are of great significance.
In the past, drug development was generally a one-off process that focused on identifying molecules for a specific target, often not applicable to another disease target. During the interview, the reporter learned that mRNA is regarded as "software" that can be rewritten. When mRNA technology builds a technology platform similar to the digital field, it is more similar to forming a shared development model, allowing drugs and vaccines based on the same platform to be developed faster, which can be used for infectious disease prevention and cancer treatment. This subverts the drug development model and significantly improves the productivity level of drug development. This means that proteins or intracellular proteins that were difficult to make drugs in the past can be encoded and expressed by mRNA, with controllable immunogenicity and purely natural metabolites. The mRNA technology platform can achieve the integration of "nucleic acid + delivery", with a wide range of application scenarios and huge potential.
In recent years, AI algorithms have been increasingly used in the field of biomedicine. Traditional drug development usually requires a multi-year development process, is costly, and has a high failure rate. Using the AI drug platform to develop new drugs has greatly improved efficiency and significantly reduced time and costs. Not long ago, the Chinese biotechnology company Yingsi Intelligent published a paper on AI pharmaceuticals in Nature Biotechnology, a sub-journal of Nature. The company's research and development process as the world's first AI drug has attracted much attention.
The combination of mRNA technology and AI is expected to reshape the industrial landscape. "mRNA technology must be combined with algorithms such as AI and machine learning to develop rapidly." Luo Yongqing said frankly that by making extensive use of biomedical data, we can quickly find new potential therapeutic targets; using AI and other algorithms for sequence design can take into account chemical stability properties, translation efficiency, immunogenicity, etc., find the optimal solution among the astronomical number of gene arrangement possibilities, and combine experimental data to ultimately promote candidate molecules for clinical application.
Talking about the independently developed mRNA tumor treatment vaccine, Luo Yongqing pointed out that the personalized mRNA tumor treatment vaccine is to identify the genetic mutations of the patient's tumor tissue through sequencing, find the antigen sequence with good immunogenicity through algorithms, and then use the mRNA technology platform to synthesize multiple Products with tumor neoantigen sequences are infused back into the patient's body to stimulate the production of specific T cells to attack the tumor. He revealed that Genting Xinyao’s mRNA tumor therapeutic vaccine with independent intellectual property rights is expected to enter the clinical stage this year.
In Luo Yongqing's view, to become a first-class enterprise in the biopharmaceutical industry, it must not only have highly successful commercialized products, but also have its own technology platform and achieve global layout. "In the first stage of corporate development, Yunding Xinyao focuses on introduction, and currently has achieved a 'two-wheel drive' of independent research and development and authorized introduction." He said that by 2030, the company will strive to become Asia's leading comprehensive biopharmaceutical company. Regarding the "going global" of China's innovative drugs, Luo Yongqing bluntly said that as long as drugs are competitive enough, they can successfully "go overseas". In the future, Genting Xinyao will continue to launch first-in-class and best-in-class new drugs with significant clinical differentiation advantages to meet the needs of patients around the world. (over)