https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/IAVI-...
I have a feeling mRNA tech will be regarded as one of those medical discoveries on par with penicillin, but only time will tell.
This assumes that the drugs are proteins, correct?
Note that binding to the same active site as something the body produces is also a strategy for imagining that you produce less of that thing. There's "binding to the same active site [and triggering it]" and there's "binding to the same active site [and plugging it]".
As to how often this strategy is used... what other strategies are there? You produce the effect you want by triggering it to occur. You inhibit the effect you don't want by blocking it from occurring.
You could think of something like a lactase supplement to help you digest milk, and that wouldn't be binding to active sites of your own molecules, but it still works by binding to particular sites on the lactose. Chemicals have their effects through chemical reactions.
> Note that binding to the same active site as something
> the body produces is also a strategy for imagining that you
> produce less of that thing. There's "binding to the
> same active site [and triggering it]" and there's "binding to
> the same active site [and plugging it]".
Genetic engineering is already used to manufacture some chemicals by modifying the DNA of microbes to produce the necessary enzymes. The microbes then consume the precursor chemicals and synthesise the product.
Indeed every natural bioactive chemical is manufactured by proteins in the form of enzymes.
So the mRNA for the necessary enzymes could be given to a person, and their own cells would become short term chemical factories for their medication.
The problem is getting the cells to synthesise the right amount of a drug, and mRNA is quickly destroyed so would require repeated dosing just like regular drug administration. For something permanent CRISPR-Cas9 would be required to edit the actual DNA of the cells.
A DIY biohacker cured his lactose intolerance by engineering a virus to modify his cells to produce the lactase enzyme in his digestive tract. I think the results lasted several months in that case but could be wrong, may have been permanent. Video of the project on YouTube.
[1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=vaccine&cond=Hiv...
If you can design an mRNA vaccine that encodes those proteins directly, you won't have to design vaccines with the mere hope that the immune system will develop the right antibodies in response to them.
From what I understand about HIV vaccines, finding the right inoculant that elicits the correct HIV eliminating antibody response is the hard part that mRNA vaccines might be able to tackle directly.