Prime Time Living 6.18.25 - Flipbook - Page 8
8
A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Wednesday, June 18, 2025
PHARMACEUTICALS
The disease-fighting
promise of mRNA
From Covid to cancer, the
opportunities are endless
By Margit B. Weisgal, Contributing Writer
m
RNA. You may have heard or become familiar with this term during the
COVID epidemic. It is the “magic ingredient” in the COVID vaccine that
tells your body to heal. But let’s take it one step at a time.
According to the National Institutes of
Health, DNA – or Deoxyribonucleic acid
– “is a molecule that contains the biological instructions that make each species
unique.” In other words, this molecule
contains instructions that go from the
adult to the offspring. So, if you look like
your mother, or have your father’s ears,
it’s because of DNA.
However, sometimes there is a glitch,
and the instructions are missing a step
or are incomplete. For thousands of
years, you had to live with this glitch.
Not anymore. mRNA, which stands for
“Messenger Ribonucleic Acid,” can modify those glitches and fix the mistake or
error or lack of a step in the instructions.
It fills in the blank(s).
A paper from the National Library
of Medicine on mRNA talked about the
future. “… mRNA has nearly limitless
range, as this biological software can
be rapidly modified to encode any ther-
apeutic protein or antigen of interest.
Furthermore, with advances in delivery
methods, enhanced efficacy, and stability, mRNA therapeutics have an almost
limitless potential.”
Jeff Coller, Bloomberg distinguished
professor of RNA biology and therapeutics at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute,
spent the last 30 years studying this
molecule. “Another way to look at mRNA
is that it’s the emissary, the ambassador
of DNA, so it ‘tells’ the body how to make
things. Today, right now, we are harnessing these discoveries, pushing open this
exciting field, and leveraging our findings
towards the development of novel therapeutics.”
What are novel (new) therapeutics?
mRNA therapeutics are new ways to provide healing. And that’s what is happening around the world. Researchers are
expanding what they can do with mRNA
to attack and cure all kinds of diseases.
Medications or pharmaceuticals were
defined as the three pillars of medicine,
three forms that were how they were
transferred into a human body. Scientists
posit mRNA will become the fourth pillar:
• small molecules: simple chemicals
made using organic chemistry, like
aspirin, quinine, or insulin.
• biologics: vaccines and therapeutic sera (serums), proteins used to
make the body immune to infectious
diseases, like Enbrel for arthritis.
• cells and genes: stem cells, CAR
t-cells, or modified genes added into
the body such as Kymriah for certain
types of lymphoma or leukemia.
• mRNA: pharmacologic – or drug –
interventions at the molecular level.
Advancing RNA is an online community focused on the rapidly evolving field
of RNA-based therapeutics and to share
knowledge. In a Guest Column supporting mRNA solutions as a fourth pillar in
medicine, the author provided perspective on how medicine has grown.
“…it’s interesting to note
how our industry’s therapeu-
tic goals also have evolved
with the construction of each
pillar. As the pharmaceutical
industry has progressed from
the most mature pharmaceutical pillar (small molecules) to
the most nascent pharmaceutical pillar (mRNA therapies), our
medicines have advanced from
being generalized therapies
to more personalized/targeted
therapies that place the patient
in the center of the manufacturing process.”
It’s this personalized aspect of mRNA
that will be the most valuable in the
future.
Why mRNA?
There is a long history of research into
mRNA as the pharmaceutical intervention for illnesses and diseases dating
back to the 1960s, so over 60 years of
knowledge. mRNA’s first use was in 2013.
When mRNA enters the body, it has a
mission to make something that the body
needs to either fight disease or infection.
