Adding Multiple Tails to mRNA Structure Can Improve Its Efficiency in Cells by 20 Times, Finds New Study

mRNA, which rose to fame with COVID-19 vaccines, are genetic sequences that instruct the body to produce proteins.

Following its success against COVID-19, its prowess is also being explored to fight other diseases like cancer. But its broad use may depend on how long the mRNA molecules stay in the body, said the team from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and MIT in the US.

To find out, they engineered multi-tailed mRNAs, which were found to last two to three times longer in animals compared to unmodified mRNA.

Further, incorporating the molecules into a CRISPR gene-editing system resulted in "more efficient gene editing in mice", the team said.

"The use of mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines is fantastic, which prompted us to explore how we could expand the possible therapeutic applications for mRNA," said Xiao Wang, senior author of the new paper, a core institute member at the Broad and an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at MIT.

"We've shown that non-natural structures can function so much better than naturally occurring ones. This research has given us a lot of confidence in our ability to modify mRNA molecules chemically and topologically. In mouse experiments, just one dose of multi-tailed mRNA led to protein production that lasted as long as 14 days, nearly double the lifetime demonstrated by previous mRNA technologies," the team said.

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The above article has been published from a wire agency with minimal modifications to the headline and text.