mRNA: Evonik cooperates with Stanford University

This month, researchers and developers from Evonik are starting a three-year collaboration with scientists from the renowned Stanford University in California (USA). Together, they want to expand the potential applications of mRNA therapeutics to better combat diseases such as cancer and AIDS in the future. This was announced by Evonik. The goal is to develop a technology for delivering mRNA to tissues and organs that goes beyond the current possibilities of lipid nanoparticles (LNP), the company said.

To this end, the experts are developing a polymer-based system that Evonik will license and market. This polymer-based platform complements Evonik's existing portfolio of lipid-based drug delivery technologies, including LNP. Drug-delivery technologies are imperative for mRNA therapies to deliver drugs to their site of action in the body in a targeted and safe manner. With the new drug delivery technology, Evonik is accelerating the life science division Nutrition & Care's portfolio shift toward system solutions, the company said. The division aims to increase the share of such system solutions from 20 percent today to more than 50 percent by 2030, it said.

Effective and safe delivery of mRNA in cells is one of the biggest challenges for expanding the use of mRNA therapeutics into promising areas such as cancer immunotherapy, protein replacement and gene editing. Currently, Evonik's accessible market potential for LNP-based delivery systems is estimated to exceed $5 billion by 2026.

Evonik will collaborate with scientists at Stanford University to scale up the synthesis and formulation and further develop the innovative organ-selective delivery technology based on a non-animal, synthetic and body-degradable polymer. The company intends to make this technology available in Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) quality for use in clinical development stages and ultimately at commercial scale. The new polymer-based delivery platform, CART (Charge Altering Releasable Transporters), was developed by Professor Robert Waymouth, Professor Paul Wender and Professor Ronald Levy of Stanford University.