A New Drug Class: RNA Degraders | Aerofarms leafy greens producing vaccines?
A New Drug Class: RNA Degraders
Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a new class of drugs that can degrade the RNA of the COVID-19 virus and thus reduce viral loads. These small molecules called proximity-induced nucleic acid degraders or PINAD can target RNA sequences and degrade them, preventing the formation of the protein they were meant to make. In the case of COVID-19 RNA, this degrader prevents the virus from using our cell’s machinery to make more copies of itself.
Degrading RNA is seen as an alternative way to treat disease, typically most therapies target the proteins of a disease, such as but not limited to antibody treatments, to treat a disease. However, if one could successfully destroy the RNA that is supposed to make the protein, they would be able to stop the disease one step earlier. This is important as targeting proteins will often lead to the protein’s sequence mutating and therefore changing its shape and thus evade the treatment. In the case of RNA, mutating the sequence will be a bit harder if a conserved sequence is targeted. Conserved sequences are usually important for basic function and therefore don’t often successfully mutate.
A problem with targeting RNA has been that an enzyme called ribonuclease is needed to do the actual degrading and most small molecules that are used as potential treatments are only able to call the ribonuclease to a target sequence to do the work which limits efficacy in cell types that do not have a lot of ribonuclease. In the case of PINADs, this small molecule can do the degrading itself which makes it so much more promising.
So far the researchers have been able to show that this idea works well in mice models for COVID-19 and they are now going to test PINADs in the context of other diseases and further test their COVID-19 treatment. This is a pretty promising technology since it can make RNA targeting therapy a reality which will open a lot of avenues for treating disease, especially in cases wherein targeting diseased or a disease’s protein(s) are not feasible.
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Featured Fake News
This week instagram shorts and tiktoks have been circulating the claim that the company Aerofarms is selling COVID-19 vaccine containing foods through Whole Foods.
This is completely false for many reasons. Firstly, Aerofarms did grow protein producing plants for COVID research, but they did not grow the mRNA vaccines.
To clarify, when we discuss proteins in this context we are referring to the product of one or more chains of amino acids, which is more broad than the protein most people are used to hearing about in nutrition values.
The protein Aerofarms was producing was the ACE-2 receptor. Basically, they were creating a plant that could be infected with COVID so they could study COVID infections without having to infect humans or rats. They did not produce a vaccine (UPenn researchers did use it to produce a covid trapping chewing gum though).
However, it is true that they are researching how they can use plant engineering to produce protein based vaccines. These are a specific type of vaccine, and while there is one for COVID-19 in the works, it is not available yet because they take much longer to develop. To see the different types of vaccines, please check out the following graphic from nature.
A second reason why this claim is false is because we do not have any edible vaccines. NONE. The chief reason being it is incredibly difficult for vaccines to survive through the amylase in our saliva and all the acid and digestive enzymes in our stomach and then entering our blood stream somehow through the small intestines. As far as our current technology goes, it is impossible. Even among pathogens, there are very few bacteria and viruses that can infect our digestive tract or use our digestive tract to enter the body because they get broken down. Hence, most stomach bugs tend to be parasites.
Most bacterial and viral infections infect us through open wounds or our respiratory system for these reasons. The same logic applies to the incredibly small molecules that make up vaccines and why we need to inject them directly into our bloodstream.
Now, you may be wondering how other drugs can be ingested but not vaccines. The reason for this is that nearly all ingestible drugs have zero biological macromolecules like carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. Hence, why our digestive tract does not have anything to digest them, because they are totally useless for building new cells in our bodies. Vaccines on the other hand, tend to have these biological macromolecules so our digestive tract does digest them and turn them into raw material for new cells.
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