This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Jagesh Shah, Chief Scientific Officer at Mirai Bio. They discuss why delivery is a central bottleneck holding back nucleic acid medicines, how Mirai's lipid nanoparticle (LNP) platform is built to reach tissues like adipocytes and T cells, and the machine learning feedback loop the company uses to engineer LNP formulations.
Show Notes
0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast
01:00 Welcome to Jagesh
01:40 Why delivery is the main bottleneck for gene therapies
03:42 Easier vs harder tissues to target for delivery
06:40 Overview of Mirai's modular delivery platform
09:02 Comparing viral vectors and lipid nanoparticles (LNPs)
12:18 Different approaches for targeting adipocytes and T cells with LNPs
15:49 Mirai's machine learning (ML) feedback loop for optimizing LNPformulation
20:50 Why lipid chemistry is still hard for ML to learn and factors affecting LNP tropism
24:35 Jagesh's path from academia to Mirai
27:23 Mirai's platform business model and how it lowers risk
29:13 What industry partnerships with Mirai look like
31:41 Mirai's next frontier of delivery to muscle tissue and the brain
34:40 Cargo size and immunogenicity of LNPs vs AAV
36:00 Why the field needs to close the regulatory pace gap
37:19 Closing remarks
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