RNA Supply Chain Articles

  1. Picasso, Pick-Up Lines, & Personalized Medicine: mRNA's Path Forward 6/27/2025

    Overall, my presentation on what the mRNA industry can learn from the artist Picasso 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.

  2. What Violin Making Can Teach Us About mRNA Therapeutic Quality 8/8/2022

    Managing the mRNA supply chain and working in mRNA process development may not look anything like the work a luthier does to hew an instrument from an ancient spruce tree. But violin craftmanship actually serves as a fantastic metaphor for the challenging work the mRNA therapeutics space is tackling in sourcing and qualifying raw materials and optimizing the critical IVT reaction.

  3. "Mirror, Mirror…": Reflections On Reducing mRNA Production COGS 4/21/2025

    Here, I outline three overarching words of wisdom I gleaned from Life Edit Therapeutics’ April Sena; Tune Therapeutics’ Tyler Goodwin; and University of Sheffield’s Adi on how the mRNA/RNA industry can better control production costs — particularly as it relates to raw material sourcing and usage.  

  4. ARW's ATMP Manufacturing Must-Reads (ST. PATRICK'S DAY EDITION!) 3/14/2024

    Day-in and day-out, I write, read, listen to, and watch as much content as I can about CGT and RNA therapy manufacturing, in particular, and/or other ATMP industry-related topics that you should at least be aware of in the manufacturing facility. Once a month, I compile the articles and industry updates I think are most worthy of your time into an unconventional roundup article.

  5. 4 Risk Mitigation Strategies For mRNA Production 4/17/2023

    Planning and procuring custom materials needed to manufacture mRNA remains a top concern. This article shares risk mitigation strategies for multi-sourcing, S&OP process, packaging size, and material expiry.

  6. Multidisciplinary mRNA: What Can We Learn From Other CGTs? 5/20/2024

    Overall, there are four high-level best practices/mindsets I proposed during a recent presentation that I believe will be crucial for us to bring some talented RNA therapeutic role models to the forefront. But there is one best practice that I think is worth emphasizing more than the others.

  7. How Can We Move RNA Forward In Our Therapeutics Arsenal? 7/18/2022

    RNA technologies, including mRNA therapeutics, have emerged as a promising drug modality. However, they have unique challenges. BioPhorum has dedicated a team to investigate these challenges and this Q&A shares their practical considerations for how to move this field forward.

  8. Therapeutic Oligonucleotides: Regulations & Quality Standards 5/20/2022

    Oligonucleotides have surfaced in the past few years as promising therapeutic agents to treat diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders, respiratory disorders, cancer, and diabetic retinopathy. This article recaps a recent USP workshop where participants from regulatory agencies, industry, and academia gathered to discuss best practices and perspectives.

  9. Moderna & The Global mRNA Supply Chain: Regulatory Lessons Learned 3/29/2023

    One of the most important reminders I took away from Moderna’s experiences ushering its mRNA vaccine onto the global market is that a commercial manufacturing process must also be accompanied by a commercially ready supply chain. Though sufficient physical volumes of each raw material and a redundant supplier network are necessities, physical scale is not the only “CQA” for which we must account when commercializing our supply chain. 

  10. “Holy T7 Polymerase, Batman!”: R&D Considerations For More Awe-Inspiring xRNA 4/24/2024

    It goes without saying we have some pretty ambitious therapeutic goals for linear mRNA and next-gen saRNA and circRNA. However, as my conversation with Koeris explored, we still have a lot of scientific and technical work/innovation ahead of us to make our RNA products “stronger” (in more ways than one).