Tag Archive for: mRNA

The Mainz-based biotech company BioNTech is facing a historic leadership change as the minds behind the COVID-19 vaccine prepare for a fresh start. Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci plan to focus entirely on mRNA platform technology and will launch a spin-off at the end of the year.

Patent disputes are part of everyday life in pharma. What is unusual is the timing. More than three years after the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bayer has launched a broad patent offensive against the makers of mRNA vaccines – just as the market has cooled and the pandemic feels firmly in the rear-view mirror. Understandable from a financial perspective, perhaps, but still raising questions about the timing.

A landmark discovery by a team of South Korean scientists could transform the way RNA-based vaccines and therapeutics are developed and produced. Researchers led jointly by Professor V. Narry Kim and Professor Jin-Hong Kim have identified a series of viral RNA motifs that make conventional messenger RNA (mRNA) far more stable and efficient, potentially revolutionising RNA drug manufacturing.

Mainz Biomed NV may have taken a major step in early pancreatic cancer detection. The company reports that its multivariate RNA liquid biopsy test, licensed from Liquid Biosciences Inc. in March, achieved 100% sensitivity and 95% specificity in a feasibility study. The results suggest the test could detect cancer—and even precancerous lesions—earlier than current methods.

Pharmacologists at the University of Göttingen, Germany, have reported a simple way to target and silence individual mitochondrial mRNAs in vivo.