Rewriting the health code: how mRNA technology is shaping the future of medicine

Overview

The Covid-19 pandemic has ushered in a new era in medicine – that of mRNA technology. But the potential of mRNA for preventing and treating a whole range of diseases goes beyond Covid-19. This industry forum addresses some key considerations for mRNA technology and what these might mean for the future.

Biotech pioneer and professor of biochemistry Pieter Cullis will open this forum with a talk about the beginnings of lipid nanoparticles in the early 1990s, and how they rose to become the industry’s standard technology for the delivery of mRNA and other nucleic acid-based drugs.

Undisputedly, mRNA technology has a promising future. Will there soon be an mRNA vaccine for malaria or cancer? Our second speaker, Ulrich Blaschke of BioNTech, will discuss the potential future applications of mRNA technologies and shed light on what could be the next breakthrough.

The industry forum is hosted by Evonik Health Care, represented through Maaike Everts and Stefan Randl. As one of the few integrated system solutions providers for the pharma and biotech industries, Evonik’s Maaike Everts and Stefan Randl will take the audience through advanced mixing and formulation technologies for mRNA and other nucleic acids therapeutics.

Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions to the speakers during the session!

Experts featuring this session

Dr. Stefan Randl
Vice President of Research, Development & Innovation
Evonik Health Care
Vita

Stefan Randl joined Evonik in 2008 and has since held multiple R&D roles in Germany and abroad. With over 15 years’ experience in the biotech, pharma and chemical industries, Stefan has expertise in the scale-up and industrialization of pharma processes. Since 2020, Stefan has been leading projects to strengthen Evonik’s position in gene therapies and mRNA therapeutics.

Stefan is an organic chemist by training. He obtained his PhD from the Technical University of Berlin and carried out postdoctoral research at Columbia University in New York and started his industrial career at Novartis.

Dr. Maaike Everts
Director Strategic Marketing Parenteral Drug Delivery Solutions
Evonik Health Care
Vita

Maaike Everts joined Evonik as a senior project manager in 2019 before taking on a role as director of strategic marketing.

Prior to this Maaike was a full professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in the U.S., where she had leadership roles in the Alabama Drug Discovery Alliance, a venture between UAB and Southern Research, and the Antiviral Drug Discovery and Development Consortium.

Maaike obtained her PhD in pharmacokinetics and drug delivery from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, which was followed by postdoctoral training in gene therapy at (UAB).

Dr. Ulrich Blaschke
Vice President Technical Development
BioNTech
Vita

Ulrich Blaschke is responsible for the implementation of an integrated CMC (chemistry, manufacturing and controls) development strategy at BioNTech and has had a critical role in the development of BioNTech’s and Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine.

Prior to BioNTech, Ulrich worked for various pharmaceutical companies in Germany and the U.S. including CureVac, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cinfa Biotech and Stada Arzneimittel.

Ulrich studied chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Muenster in Germany and completed postdoctoral research at the Rockefeller University in New York.

Prof. Dr. Pieter Cullis
Scientific Director and CEO of the NanoMedicines Innovation Network and
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of British Columbia, Canada
Vita

Pieter Cullis and co-workers have been responsible for fundamental advances in nanomedicines employing lipid nanoparticle technology (LNPs) for cancer and gene therapies. Pieter has co-founded 10 biotech companies, published over 350 scientific articles and is an inventor on over 60 patents.

Pieter and his team laid the groundwork for the development of the first LNP delivery system to receive regulatory approval, ONPATTRO®, for the delivery of RNAi.

His work has also been crucial for the development of lipids utilized in the LNPs used in the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, which has been administered to millions of people around the world.