Plasmid DNA serves a variety of purposes, from critical starting material for proteins, mRNA, viral vectors, and drug substances. Below, Dr. Emma Bjorgum, the Vice President of Client Services of the DNA Business Unit at Aldevron and an expert in plasmid manufacturing, provided insights into the process and an outlook on the future.
Prime editing (PE) is a next-generation gene editing technology that utilizes a Cas9 protein fused to a prime editing guide ribonucleic acid (pegRNA) to achieve high CRISPR/Cas9 editing efficiency and precision. However, the length requirement of pegRNAs at 120–250 nucleotides (nt) and their high level of secondary structure formation present analytical challenges for the purity analysis of chemically synthesized pegRNAs during development and quality control (QC).
Currently, there are 3 main types of in vitro transcribed (IVT) RNA drugs. Two of these—conventional messenger RNA (mRNA) and base-modified mRNA (bmRNA), which incorporates chemically modified nucleotides—are non-replicating. The third type is self-replicating RNA (srRNA), which is based on an engineered viral genome but devoid of viral structural protein genes. Its self-replicating ability makes srRNA a promising tool for new therapeutic drugs.