Our scientist Tim Beissert will present his recent findings on “Trans-amplifying RNA: A versatile vector system to deliver therapeutic proteins and RNAs" will be presented.

The symposium organized by the French Alliance for Life Sciences - Aviesan - focusses on RNA biology and its various applications.The latest finding about RNA therapeutics, RNA/RNP biogenesis and structure, RNA modifications and new technological developments will be discussed.

Tim has been studying trans-amplifying RNA for many years. The most recent publication of our Vectors team including Tim and Mario Perkovic has just been published in the journal “Molecular Therapy” : A trans-amplifying RNA simplified to essential elements is highly replicative and robustly immunogenic in mice.

„Trans-amplifying RNA (taRNA) is a proprietary vaccine platform of TRON and BioNTech. It is based on a very small amount of antigen coding RNA (called transreplicon) which is copied to high amounts within cells by using the RNA-polymerases of alphaviruses. While being highly efficient, the antigen-coding transreplicon described in the previous proof-of-concept study led to production of two different mRNA forms after replication, whereby one of them may give rise to safety issues. In our new paper we describe a number of optimizations to this rather roughly designed first-generation transreplicon. First, we streamlined its structure to remove sequence stretches that are unneeded or even obstructive for the clinical translation. Next, the streamlined trans-replicon (STR) was subjected to a directed evolution approach, which enhanced its replication rates and expression. Both measures together resulted in a significantly improved immunogenicity of the platform. We believe that the global structure of the STR is the most appealing to enter clinical translation, and that further optimizations of taRNA should include the use of STRs instead of parental first generation transreplicons.” says Tim.

See the full article for the next 50 days under the following link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gXST5QliS1LI7