Underlying science of RNATICS’ technology published in Nature Communications

The group of scientific co-founder Prof. Dr. Dr. Stefan Engelhardt developed a sugar-bound RNA drug that effectively targets macrophages to fight lung damage. This innovation may be key to preventing severe pneumonia after viral infection. The groundbreaking work has been recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Communication. The paper describes the first-in-class mechanism to efficiently target RNA therapeutics to alveolar macrophages and its therapeutic potential. Prof. Dr. Dr. Stefan Engelhardt, scientific co-founder of RNATICS The clinical translation of this scientific breakthrough is driven by RNATICS, a spin-off from TU Munich, and pre-clinical safety and toxicology studies are currently ongoing. The first clinical trials in humans with the lead compound RCS-21 are planned for 2024. Dr. Deepak Ramanujam, Director of R&D at RNATICS, shared first author Beck, C., Ramanujam, D., Vaccarello, P., Widenmeyer, F. , Feuerherd, M., Cheng, C.-C., Bomhard, A., Abikeeva, T., Schädler, J., Sperhake, J.-P., Graw, M. , Safi, S., Hoffmann, H., Staab-Weijnitz, C. A., Rad, R., Protzer, U., Frischmuth, T. & Engelhardt, S. “Trimannose-coupled antimiR-21 for macrophage-targeted inhalation treatment of acute inflammatory lung damage” . Nature Commununications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40185-1. Press Release TU Munich

The release as fetched from its publisher. rnatics.com ↗