The efficacy of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based therapeutics, which are genetic information carriers, has been enhanced by a newly developed technology. The method increases protein production by allowing mRNA to remain longer inside cells, applying the principle by which viruses protect their own RNA in host cells.

mRNA delivers design information to cells to produce specific proteins. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA vaccines also use this principle to induce an immune response by directing the production of viral proteins.

The RNA Research Center of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) announced on the 13th that it had analyzed the genes of 337 viruses that infect vertebrates and identified the regulatory principle that delays RNA degradation and increases protein production. The research team discovered a genetic regulatory element that enables viral RNA to use host cell enzymes to reinforce the terminal poly(A) tail (a structure that slows RNA degradation), and named it “Tailon.”

mRNA becomes unstable and is easily degraded when the poly(A) tail shortens. Tailon “Pt1,” discovered by the research team in an eel virus, directly binds to the enzyme that forms the tail and helps extend it. Linear mRNA to which Pt1 was attached showed an approximately threefold increase in intracellular persistence from 7.6 hours to 23.1 hours, and a fivefold increase in protein production.

Director Kim V. Narry said, “This will serve as a tool to overcome the limitations of existing therapeutic technologies and significantly enhance the duration of drug efficacy.” The findings were published in the international journal Cell on the 14th.

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