Raina Biosciences published data from its generative AI platform in a study, “Deep generative models design mRNA sequences with enhanced translational capacity and stability,” recently published in Science. The data support Raina’s approach to mRNA design using its GEMORNA platform to generate novel sequences with superior drug properties over existing mRNA discovery methods, claimed Jicong Cao, PhD, CEO, and company co-founder, who added that the company’s mission is to transform the mRNA-based therapeutics landscape by accelerating drug discovery timelines and opening new therapeutic areas for mRNA with best-in-class AI-designed therapeutics.
Despite the success of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, extending this modality to more diseases necessitates substantial enhancements. “We present GEMORNA, a generative RNA model that utilizes Transformer architectures tailored for mRNA coding sequences (CDSs) and untranslated regions (UTRs), to design novel mRNAs with enhanced expression and stability,” the research team wrote.
“GEMORNA-designed full-length mRNAs exhibited up to a 41-fold increase in firefly luciferase expression compared to an optimized benchmark in vitro. GEMORNA-generated therapeutic mRNAs achieved up to a 15-fold enhancement in human erythropoietin (EPO) expression and substantially elicited antibody titers of the COVID-19 vaccine in mice.
“Additionally, GEMORNA’s versatility extends to circular RNA, substantially enhancing circular EPO expression and boosting anti-tumor cytotoxicity in CAR-T cells. These advancements highlight deep generative AI’s vast potential for mRNA therapeutics.”
“Raina’s GEMORNA platform is built upon a decade of the team’s foundational work in synthetic biology and artificial intelligence,” said Cao, who is also corresponding author of the Science paper. “We are excited to work with industry-leading pharma and biotech companies to expand the usage of mRNA-based therapeutics while we prepare to build an internal pipeline.”
“Raina has the potential to transform mRNA therapeutics by rapidly and reliably generating novel sequences with greater performance, precision, and efficacy,” noted Timothy Lu, MD, PhD, chairman of the board at Raina and a former MIT faculty member. “The GEMORNA platform could be a sea change for biopharma companies pursuing mRNA-based medicines beyond traditional infectious disease vaccines, ranging from neoantigen cancer vaccines, in vivo CARs, to gene editing or gene therapy applications.”
