Oral Presentation Melbourne Immunotherapy Spring Symposium 2025

Exploiting the immune system with next-generation messenger RNA (mRNA)-lipid nanoparticle (LNP) immunotherapeutics (127261)

Cassandra I Ouslinis 1 , Haiyin Liu 2 , Angus Johnston 2 , Christophe Macri 1 , Justine D Mintern 1
  1. Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne
  2. Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Melbourne

Messenger RNA (mRNA)-lipid nanoparticle (LNP) vaccination has garnered much excitement following its success in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, the technology seldom focuses on the potential to manipulate and enhance the immune system response beyond the delivery of antigen mRNA. Current mRNA-LNP vaccines do not fully exploit the ability of specialized immune cells, known as professional antigen-presenting cells, which harness an unparalleled ability to initiate adaptive immune responses. We have used a cre reporter mouse strain to track the expression of mRNA-LNPs by such antigen presenting cells at both the site of injection (muscle) and secondary lymphoid organs. With this information, we have then designed novel mRNA-LNPs that encode in conjunction with an antigen of choice, immunogenic mRNAs such as cytokines or transcription factors. The inclusion of these immunogenic mRNAs is designed to boost vaccine immunogenicity through an expected increased abundance and activation of antigen-presenting cells. The resulting T-cell priming and specific cytotoxicity are enhanced even with the delivery of low dose of antigen mRNA. Vaccination with these immunogenic mRNA-LNPs is also protective in a murine model of Eμ-myc driven B Cell lymphoma. Furthermore, this can be achieved without the precision cell-targeting that other immune cell-focused approaches require. These vaccines will uniquely exploit antigen-presenting cell biology to attempt to overcome current obstacles in mRNA vaccination, such as waning immunity and the development of effective cancer immunotherapies, and highlight a platform for testing an array of genes that could potentially improve mRNA-LNP based therapeutic outcomes for and beyond vaccination.