New technologies for the characterization of mRNA therapeutics/vaccines

mRNA technology has recently demonstrated the ability to significantly change the timeline for developing and delivering a new vaccine from years to months, highlighted by the successful development and approval of two mRNA vaccines for COVID-19. The development of new tools/technologies for the analysis of

mRNA therapeutics is critical to underpin manufacturing and the development of new mRNA therapeutics/vaccines. Direct RNA sequence mapping is a powerfull new method utilised for the characterisation of mRNA therapetucs. However, there are limited RNase enzymes that can be used, limiting the application

of such methods for the characterization of mRNA. It is proposed to develop a toolbox of RNA restriction enzymes based on the MazF endonucleases from different organisms that exhibit different sequence specificities. Training will be provided in a wide range of state of the art equipment including HPLC/UHPLC, mass spectrometry, capillary

electrophoresis, protein expression and purification.