2021-RD-Mark-Bathe

• Video details

  Synthetic nucleic acids can now be formulated as highly structured virus-like particles (VLPs) on the 10-100nm scale, and manufactured at pre-clinical scales as vaccine or gene therapeutic delivery vectors. These VLPs can be used to display variable copy numbers and types of peptide and protein antigens, as well as sugars and small molecules for programmable immune cell targeting and stimulation. They may be used as traditional vaccine particles to stimulate humoral immunity, or to incorporate gene therapeutic modalities such as siRNAs, ASOs, mRNAs, or CRISPR RNPs. In this talk, I will present our lab’s work on the design and fabrication of DNA- and RNA-based VLPs as vaccine and gene therapeutic modalities, and present their application to the design of subunit vaccines for COVID19 and AIDS. I will discuss how these VLPs can be used as adjuvants to stimulate innate immune response, as well as to potentially target therapeutic nucleic acids to specific cell and tissue subtypes.

Locked Interactive transcript