BioCentury
ARTICLE | Product Development

Getting the message

What the next few years will reveal about the feasibility of mRNA products

February 25, 2017 1:44 AM UTC

Hailed as a faster, cheaper way of producing therapeutic proteins than recombinant technologies, mRNA technologies have attracted some $2.5 billion from partnerships and investments from pharmas and VCs hoping to get in on the ground floor of the next big new therapeutic modality. But myriad scientific and clinical challenges remain.

Within the past five years, two of the field’s nuts-and-bolts problems -- stabilizing and manufacturing the oligonucleotides -- have been sufficiently resolved to make pilot projects feasible for pharmas...