Sci Rep: Uses messenger RNA to teach muscle cells to produce antibodies

Commercial monoclonal antibodies are an effective but expensive way

Chuck Sheumek, a researcher at Tufts University and professor of infectious diseases and global health at the Cummings Veterinary School, said the next generation of antibody therapies needs to be cheaper and hopefully more powerful for use in developing countries and veterinarians

Camelids are unique in that they make a class of antibodies with simple and small binding domains, called nanosomes, making them easier to join together, creating a single antibody formulation capable of attaching to multiple targets, which is an ideal feature for improved therapeutic agents

In a study published July 8 in the journal Scientific Reports, Sumek's team demonstrated some of the mRNA techniques commonly used in COVID-19 vaccines that can be used to teach cells to produce a single protein

"This paper shows for the first time that complex long biomolecules — made up of six different antibodies expressed as a translational product of the MNA code — can be truly effectively used as immunotherapy

Building antibodies using messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a genetic material

In the Science Reports paper, Sumek and his collaborators, including lead author Jean Mukherjee, a former assistant professor at Cummings College and now at the University of Pei edward island's Atlantic Veterinary School, tested whether messenger rna could teach mouse cells to produce a single molecule made up of six differently linked hump antibodies, called heterohexamers, rather than, for example, a human antibody

The research team, in collaboration with McNater's lab at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Jesse Erasmus and team at Seattle biopharmaceutical developer HDT Bio, showed that intramuscular injection of the formula mRNA into mice can induce a multimer that produces six chained camel fat antibodies that can effectively neutralize the three most dangerous botulinum toxins

Once the mRNA is injected into mice, it is absorbed by local cells, which then produce antitoxin antibodies encoded by the mRNA and secreted into the

"The results are what I'd like, and we show that the antibodies produced by mrna are treated as well as when we injected the heterohexamer protein itself into mice," Shoemaker said

In recent related work, shoemaker labs, in collaboration with several other research teams, also tested a pathogen hunting system using camel fat antibodies in botulism models that deliver therapeutic antibodies into the nerve cells of poisoned animal models to reverse paralysis

Although antibody therapies are powerful, they are expensive, with some costing more than $

"COVID-19 has taken Messenger RNA technology to new heights, and it's already achieved, but it's nowhere near the point where

Sumec's next step is to find ways to apply the platform to pathogens in developing countries, which he has spent much of his career studying, such as the bacteria and parasites

"Our passion is to use the tools of biotechnology to help those who can't benefit from them at the

The research reported in this paper was supported by the National Institutes of Health, award numbers R01AI125704 and R01AI093467, respectively, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the U.

Article title

Intramuscular delivery of formulated RNA encoding six linked nanobodies is highly protective for exposures to three Botulinum neurotoxin serotypes