RNA Vaccines

Kate E. Broderick Ph.D., Laurent M. Humeau, Kate E. Broderick

Thomas Kramps, Knut Elbers

Nucleic acid vaccines are a next-generation branch of vaccines which offer major benefits over their conventional protein, bacteria, or viral-based counterparts. However, to be effective in large mammals and humans, an enhancing delivery technology is required. Electroporation is a physical technique which results in improved delivery of large molecules through the cell membrane. In the case of plasmid DNA and mRNA, electroporation enhances both the uptake and expression of the delivered nucleic acids. The muscle is an attractive tissue for nucleic acid vaccination in a clinical setting due to the accessibility and abundance of the target tissue. Historical clinical studies of electroporation in the muscle have demonstrated the procedure to be generally well tolerated in patients. Previous studies have determined that optimized electroporation parameters (such as electrical field intensity, pulse length, pulse width and drug product formulation) majorly impact the efficiency of nucleic acid delivery. We provide an overview of DNA/RNA vaccination in the muscle of mice. Our results suggest that the technique is safe and effective and is highly applicable to a research setting as well as scalable to larger animals and humans.