Raina Biosciences Inc., an mRNA technology and therapeutics company, has published data from its generative AI platform in Science.
The data supports Raina’s approach to mRNA design using its GEMORNA platform to generate novel sequences with superior drug properties over existing mRNA discovery methods. Founded by a team with deep RNA therapeutics and AI expertise, the company’s mission is to transform the mRNA-based therapeutics landscape by accelerating drug discovery timelines and opening new therapeutic areas for mRNA with best-in-class AI-designed therapeutics.
The Science article marks a landmark for optimising novel mRNAs with enhanced expression and durability to facilitate a wide range of therapeutic mRNA applications.
The article reveals that Raina’s GEMORNA platform designs superior linear and circular mRNA drug molecules with optimised expression levels and durability, addressing two major issues that have limited the effectiveness of mRNA-based therapeutics, and is highly differentiated from prior RNA language models developed for predictive tasks through its direct design of novel sequences from a near infinite design space.
GEMORNA-generated mRNAs elicited significantly higher immune response in mice compared to a leading commercially available mRNA vaccine sequence, potentially supporting mRNA therapeutic vaccine applications for diseases such as cancer; achieved up to a 150-fold increase in human erythropoietin (hEPO) expression compared to an optimised benchmark, potentially supporting mRNA medicines for gene therapy; and demonstrated a 5-fold increase in CD19 CAR expression and a 2-fold improvement in durability compared to a patented benchmark, resulting in nearly 100% anti-tumour efficacy in primary human T cells, potentially supporting mRNA therapies for in vivo CAR-T.
“Raina’s GEMORNA platform is built upon a decade of the team’s foundational work in synthetic biology and artificial intelligence,” said Jicong Cao, CEO and co-founder of Raina Biosciences, and corresponding author of the Science paper.
“We are excited to work with industry-leading pharma and biotech companies to expand the usage of mRNA-based therapeutics while we prepare to build an internal pipeline.”
“Raina has the potential to transform mRNA therapeutics by rapidly and reliably generating novel sequences with greater performance, precision and efficacy,” said Timothy Lu, Raina’s chairman of the board and former MIT faculty member.
“The GEMORNA platform could be a sea change for biopharma companies pursuing mRNA-based medicines beyond traditional infectious disease vaccines ranging from neoantigen cancer vaccines, in vivo CARs, to gene editing or gene therapy applications.”
Jim Cornall is editor of Deeptech Digest and publisher at Ayr Coastal Media. He is an award-winning writer, editor, photographer, broadcaster, designer and author. Contact Jim here.
