Can pulmonary RNA delivery improve our pandemic preparedness?

The coronavirus pandemic has changed our perception of RNA medicines, and RNA vaccines have revolutionized our pandemic preparedness. But are we indeed prepared for the next variant or the next emerging virus? How can we prepare? And what does the role of inhaled antiviral RNA play in this regard? When the pandemic started, I rerouted much of the ongoing inhaled RNA delivery research in my group towards the inhibition and treatment of respiratory viral infections. Two years later, I have taken the literature, past and ongoing clinical trials into consideration and have gained new insights based on our collaborative research which I will discuss in this oration.

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Conclusions
In conclusion, I believe that pandemic preparedness is a combination of aspects. Having efficient antivirals that are specific enough to display a favorable therapeutic range but broad enough to be effective against potential newly emerging viruses is key. But also the ability to produce and store such antivirals affects our preparedness. The combination of identifying antiviral siRNA against conserved areas of the coronavirus genome with developing safe nanomedicines and the production of dry powders for inhalation and enhanced storage stability puts us in a good position for developing RNA therapeutics – the dream I already had in high school without being able to put it in words. And to return to the central thread, we also aim to eventually correlate results from our in vivo studies with in silico and in vitro parameters to determine if efficient siRNA nanocarriers can be predicted by computational approaches.

My personal goal for the coming years is the establishment of a machine-learning algorithm for predicting effective RNA nanocarriers to enable clinical trials with RNA therapeutics more quickly in the future.

About this article: Olivia M. Merkel, Can pulmonary RNA delivery improve our pandemic preparedness? Journal of Controlled Release, Volume 345, 2022, Pages 549-556, ISSN 0168-3659, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jconrel.2022.03.039.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168365922001651)