Good afternoon, today I'll be presenting MIT's research "A new technique could accelerate the development of RNA therapies." MIT chemical engineers built an automated system that produces lipid nanoparticles, the tiny fat bubbles that carry RNA medicines into the body, faster and with precise control over their size and shape. This could speed up the development of new vaccines and treatments.
- RNA vaccines and similar treatments are packaged inside lipid nanoparticles, because mRNA injected on its own would quickly break down in the body before it could reach the right cells.
- Current methods for designing these particles rely on slow trial-and-error experiments, and until now no production method could reliably control the particles' size and shape.
- The particles are normally made by quickly mixing a stream of lipids in ethanol with about three times as much mRNA dissolved in an acidic buffer, which forms the particles but offers little control over them.
- In an earlier study, the MIT team split the mixing into two steps, where the lipids and mRNA are mixed evenly first and more buffer is added after a short delay, so a longer delay makes bigger particles and a shorter one keeps them small.
- By changing the buffer's concentration in the second step, the researchers could also change the particles' shape from spheres into longer, avocado-like forms without changing what the particles are made of.
- In the new study, published in ACS Nano, the team automated the whole process and added a device that measures particle size as they form, so the system can hit a target size and adjust itself if it misses.
- The researchers used the data from these experiments to train a machine-learning model that predicts which settings will produce a specific particle size or shape.
- Controlling size matters because it determines where in the body a particle ends up, and the team has filed a patent and started a company called BIZON Labs to bring the technology to market.
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