New research collaboration using mRNA therapeutics

This month, researchers and devel­op­ers from Evonik are start­ing a three-year col­lab­o­ra­tion with sci­en­tists from the renowned Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in Cal­i­for­nia. Togeth­er, they want to expand the pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions of mRNA ther­a­peu­tics so that they can bet­ter com­bat dis­eases such as can­cer and AIDS in the future. The goal is to devel­op a tech­nol­o­gy for deliv­er­ing mRNA to tis­sues and organs that goes beyond the cur­rent pos­si­bil­i­ties of lipid nanopar­ti­cles (LNP). To this end, the experts are devel­op­ing a poly­mer-based sys­tem that Evonik will license and market.

This poly­mer-based plat­form com­ple­ments the exist­ing port­fo­lio of lipid-based drug deliv­ery tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing LNP. So-called drug deliv­ery tech­nolo­gies are imper­a­tive for mRNA ther­a­pies to tar­get and safe­ly deliv­er active ingre­di­ents to their site of action in the body. With this new tech­nol­o­gy, the com­pa­ny is accel­er­at­ing the port­fo­lio shift of the Nutri­tion & Care life sci­ence divi­sion towards sys­tem solu­tions. The divi­sion aims to increase the share of such sys­tem solu­tions from 20 per­cent today to more than 50 per­cent by 2030.

“We are proud to part­ner with Stan­ford and com­bine our inno­va­tion in advanced drug deliv­ery tech­nol­o­gy. With this project, we are devel­op­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of mRNA-based medicine.”

- Dr. Thomas Rier­meier, Head of the Health Care Busi­ness Unit

Effec­tive and safe deliv­ery of mRNA in the cell is one of the major chal­lenges for expand­ing the use of cor­re­spond­ing ther­a­peu­tics to promis­ing areas such as can­cer immunother­a­py, pro­tein replace­ment and gene edit­ing. The com­pa­ny sees itself here as a lead­ing inte­grat­ed devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner for drug deliv­ery sys­tems for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try. Cur­rent­ly, the acces­si­ble mar­ket poten­tial for LNP-based deliv­ery sys­tems is esti­mat­ed to exceed $5 bil­lion by 2026.

“If we are to real­ize the full poten­tial of mRNA ther­a­peu­tics, we need a range of tech­nolo­gies that tar­get an expand­ed range of tis­sues and organs,” said Dr. Ste­fan Ran­dl, head of research, devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion at Evonik Health Care. “We look for­ward to com­mer­cial­iz­ing the new plat­form in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Stan­ford University.”

The group will work with sci­en­tists at the uni­ver­si­ty to scale up the syn­the­sis and for­mu­la­tion and fur­ther devel­op the inno­v­a­tive organ-selec­tive deliv­ery tech­nol­o­gy based on a non-ani­mal, syn­thet­ic poly­mer that is degrad­able in the body. As an inte­grat­ed devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner for gene ther­a­pies, the Group aims to make this tech­nol­o­gy avail­able in Good Man­u­fac­tur­ing Prac­tice (GMP) qual­i­ty for use in clin­i­cal devel­op­ment stages and ulti­mate­ly at com­mer­cial scale.

The new poly­mer-based deliv­ery plat­form CART (Charge Alter­ing Releasable Trans­porters) was devel­oped by Pro­fes­sor Robert Way­mouth, Pro­fes­sor Paul Wen­der and Pro­fes­sor Ronald Levy of Stan­ford University.