It is largely known that oral drug delivery for macromolecules is often limited by the degradative environment of the gastrointestinal tract. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and their collaborators have presented Robocap, an oral mucus-clearing drug-delivery capsule that enhances the gastrointestinal absorption of drugs.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nanosized membrane vesicles released from a variety of cells that play important roles in cell-cell communication and which circulate in almost every body fluid, including blood, urine and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

Two research teams independently reported in the Oct. 5, 2022, issues of Nature (Duke University) and Nature Biotechnology (Stanford University) on the development of RNA sensing technologies designed to target cell-specific RNA sequences to form a double-stranded RNA:RNA hybrid that is then edited by endogenous ADAR proteins to remove a stop codon and ultimately enabled to express any protein placed within the construct. The target design typically starts from single-cell RNA transcriptomics data that previously identified cell-specific RNA transcriptomics.

Microorganisms such as bacteria, sperm and microalgae have evolved to develop robust actuation systems that enable autonomous motion, and these natural cellular systems have recently emerged as attractive carriers for transporting therapeutics to hard-to-reach body locations.  According to a recent publication, researchers from University of California, San Diego have developed a novel algae-based motor platform, with the aim of addressing limitations of cargo delivery into the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.

Failure of integrin inhibitors in clinical trials can be avoided by redesigning the chemical conformation of these proteins, as shown by a study led by Timothy Springer, a professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Boston Children's Hospital, and one of the winners of the 2022 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.

Arizona State University scientists have discovered an unprecedented pathway in a fungus to produce telomerase RNA (TER) from a protein-encoding messenger RNA (mRNA). Unlike in animals and other fungi, this fungal TER is transcribed by RNA polymerase III, lacks a protective 5′ cap and it is processed from the 3′-untranslated region of an mRNA transcript. This telomerase has two essential structural domains that keep it active. For now, scientists have only observed this process in the fungus Ustilago maydis, or Mexican truffle. “In animals, and even in Ascomycota, which is another fungal phylum, the telomerase RNA is transcribed by RNA polymerase II as an independent gene. This is the only case among all different kingdoms in eukaryotes that the telomerase RNA is processed from the mRNA molecule. It is a very unusual biogenesis pathway.” Julian Chen told BioWorld.

The 2022 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University, to Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and – for the second time – to Barry Sharpless of The Scripps Research Institute “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.”

Click chemistry, the Nobel Committee’s Olof Ramström told reporters while announcing the prize, “is almost like it sounds – it’s all about linking different molecules.”

He likened click chemistry to a seatbelt buckle, whose interlocking parts can be attached to many different materials, linking them by snapping the two parts of the buckle together.

“The problem was to find good chemical buckles,” Ramström said – chemicals that “will easily snap together, and importantly, they won’t snap with anything else.”

Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new genome editing technique than can activate any gene, including those that have been silenced, allowing new drug targets and causes of drug resistance to be explored.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Olipass Corp. have entered into a research and development collaboration agreement to jointly develop a set of antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) molecules based on Olipass' proprietary modified peptide nucleic acids.