What's Propelling mRNA Therapies Today?

Over the next three to five years, it is anticipated that the portfolio of mRNA treatments and vaccines will grow significantly due to the potential that mRNA has across indications.

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Asian biotech businesses have also stepped up and are aggressively pursuing in-house R&D and working with companies to enrich their mRNA pipelines. However, the US and Europe will continue to be the centres of mRNA R&D and product development. Let's explore the mRNA therapeutics world.

The commercialisation of the first mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 in 2021 was a turning point in the journey of this four decade long researched area. The success of mRNA vaccines has bolstered a wave of innovations and accelerated pipelines around this platform technology. In the last two years, mRNA therapy developers have received tremendous attention from the research community, federal funding agencies, VC firms and biopharma companies, which invested heavily in this segment. Many pharma companies realigned their portfolios to prioritise mRNA R&D.

mRNA is a versatile platform and its obvious advantages include flexibility, safety, rapid design and manufacture, and modularity when compared to other modalities, such as DNA, cell-based vaccines, viral vector vaccines and recombinantly expressed proteins.

The industry waging forward to develop solutions that could enable widespread adoption across multiple indications, and along with key global mRNA companies such as Moderna, CureVac and BioNTech, Asian counterparts Gennova, Abogen Biosciences, Stemirna Therapeutics, mCureX are also pursuing to develop a mRNA vaccine and therapeutic portfolio.

Tremendous Potential