Picasso, Pick-Up Lines, & Personalized Medicine: mRNA's Path Forward

By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA

Inspiration for innovative ideas comes in many shapes and forms.

Take Picasso, for example. In addition to spending a significant portion of his early career fascinated by and painting circus performers, this artistic wild child is also known to have been greatly inspired by his wives (2) and his many mistresses — only 6 of which, please note, were “serious” enough to appear as subjects in his paintings.

I shared these amusing biographical details during my presentation at the inaugural CASSS mRNA Symposium to emphasize one of the biggest “life lessons” the mRNA industry can learn from Picasso: Innovation does not occur in a bubble. Though I’m not implying we should follow directly in Picasso’s footsteps (…), he’s a great reminder that there are many ways we can be inspired to innovate and strengthen our industry.

Overall, my presentation singled out a few specific areas from which I felt our industry could garner greater inspiration and operational prowess. But given how “collaborative” many of these sources of inspiration are, I’ve introduced each of my takeaways with a surprisingly relevant (albeit bad) art-themed pick-up line. After all, if there’s one sector that knows it takes more than one to “tango,” it’s the mRNA industry.

Are you a Picasso? Because when I look at you, I feel like I’m seeing things from multiple perspectives.

[i.e., Don’t forget to look outside the mRNA industry for some answers.]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (and again): the mRNA industry is shaping up to be incredibly “multidisciplinary,” which, in turn, necessitates a much less siloed approach to drug development.  

Obviously, we can appreciate the unique nuances that mRNA brings to the table. IVT and cell culture are different animals entirely. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from the cell-based industries that have come before our own.

I’ve written several articles in the past exploring what we can learn from the other modalities in the ATMP space. For example, as I unpacked in this previous article, regulatory milestones, standardization efforts in the personalized medicine sphere, as well as the competitive dynamics of the CGT space are all worth keeping our eyes on as we move forward. However, in keeping with our trusty pick-up line above, “seeing things from multiple perspectives” will be exceptionally important for the mRNA space considering the industry’s first commercialized therapeutic is likely to be a personalized cancer immunotherapy. In other words, we’re going to be facing the same commercialization challenges the cell therapy industry has been discussing for years.

As such, it behooves us to be much more attentive to and collaborative with the cell therapy space. Whether it be striving to improve turn-around time, scaling analytical development for personalized approaches, or improving COGS (which still are impacted by time losses and low yields), we and our autologous cell therapy brethren have much more in common than we may think. In fact, I’ve proposed — and would propose again — that co-location of mRNA and cell therapy conferences and/or more panels comprising experts from both modalities could be beneficial “couplings” to ensure we aren’t recreating unnecessary wheels in the personalized medicine sector.  

For a more specific discussion on the topic, I’d encourage you to check out or refresh your memory of this previous article of “hot takes” on personalized mRNA medicines.  

Can I borrow your palette? I need the perfect colors for our future.

[i.e., Biotechs & suppliers don’t always need to have/do it all by themselves.]

Back in the days of the pandemic, there was a debate the ATMP space couldn’t stop having: Should we buy, or should we build? Of course, in many cases this conversation was necessitated by capacity and supply shortages. Not to mention, companies were flush with cash in ways they are not today.

This debate has not carried over into the mRNA space. However, I have started to see a much more strategic industry — one that’s increasingly keen on embracing partnerships and/or acquisitions and mergers to ensure they’re using their internal resources in a more responsible and focused manner.

On the supplier side, partnerships like the one between Aldevron and Trilink for CleanCap depict a supplier network intent on consolidating and eliminating excessive back-and-forths for clients. The partnership between the CDMO Wacker & mRNA engineering company RNAV8 showcases the industry’s growing attention to the biological and structural nuances impacting mRNA expression, durability, and dose size, while alliances between Aldevron & Acuitas and Biovectra & Acuitas demonstrate our acknowledgement (finally) that developing an LNP platform, much like developing an mRNA platform, is a difficult artform. Why recreate that wheel when there are companies with well-established platforms who are willing to “share?”

On the innovator side, the rise of nonviral delivery vehicle discovery/development platforms has encouraged the industry to get smarter about which skills they absolutely need to have under their own roofs to be successful. In turn, we’ve seen a variety of different strategies emerging. Mergers with or acquisitions of delivery platform companies create end-to-end DS-DP production under a single biotech roof (e.g., Orna & ReNAgade/Chroma Medicines & Nvelop Tx). Partnerships between biotechs and delivery platform companies enable the biotech to home in on the complexities of the RNA drug substance, while working with nonviral delivery experts to craft the best DP (e.g., Genevant & Epitopia, and Vertex & ReNAgade). Just as there was no one right answer to the question of buy vs. build, there is seemingly no one “right” strategy for DS/DP production in the RNA industry thus far.

Are you a mosaic? Because you’ve pieced together my heart.

[i.e., Piece together national or local ecosystems to scale access]

Given the news a few weeks ago about the rapid multi-stakeholder development and dosing of Baby KJ with a personalized mRNA therapy, I would continue to harp on the importance of close alignment amongst all the different stakeholders — much like the tiles of a mosaic — to enable greater access. Over the past few years, I’ve been taking stock of multi-stakeholder partnerships that create what I like to think of as end-to-end (development-reimbursement) ecosystems.

For example, back in my days of covering the biosimilars industry, I penned an article about the productive development partnerships (PDPs) in Brazil. These partnerships between three players — a public Brazilian laboratory, a private biotech company, and an international pharma company — promote the local development of a therapeutic and promise the manufacturer a percentage of the government’s purchase of that product. Though originally established to promote the local development of cost-effective biosimilars, I’ve heard such partnerships are also in progress today for certain mRNA-based products. (For a more detailed description of how such a partnership works, check out my previous article here.)

In addition to the PDPs, I’ve outlined other “mosaic-like” initiatives worth watching in this previous article.

Overall, the construction of ecosystems that bring together all stakeholders (manufacturers, reimbursement arms, patients, physicians, and sites of care) and/or promote the colocation of manufacturing with a site of care (and its patients/physicians) is an important strategy I’d love to see replicated in different countries or biotech hub cities to help scale-out personalized medicines access.