Polysarcosine-based lipid formulations for intracranial delivery of mRNA

Messenger RNA (mRNA) is revolutionizing the future of therapeutics in a variety of diseases, including neurological disorders. Lipid formulations have shown to be an effective platform technology for mRNA delivery and are the basis for the approved mRNA vaccines. In many of these lipid formulations, polyethylene glycol (PEG)-functionalized lipid provides steric stabilization and thus plays a key role in improving the stability both ex vivo and in vivo. However, immune responses towards PEGylated lipids may compromise the use of those lipids in some applications (e.g., induction of antigen specific tolerance), or within sensitive tissues (e.g., central nervous system (CNS)). With respect to this issue, polysarcosine (pSar)-based lipopolymers were investigated as an alternative to PEG-lipid in mRNA lipoplexes for controlled intracerebral protein expression in this study. Four polysarcosine-lipids with defined sarcosine average molecular weight (Mn = 2 k, 5 k) and anchor diacyl chain length (m = 14, 18) were synthesized, and incorporated into cationic liposomes. We found that the content, pSar chain length and carbon tail lengths of pSar-lipids govern the transfection efficiency and biodistribution. Increasing carbon diacyl chain length of pSar-lipid led up to 4- and 6-fold lower protein expression in vitro. When the length of either pSar chain or lipid carbon tail increased, the transfection efficiency decreased while the circulation time was prolonged. mRNA lipoplexes containing 2.5% C14-pSar2k resulted in the highest mRNA translation in the brain of zebrafish embryos through intraventricular injection, while C18-pSar2k-liposomes showed a comparable circulation with DSPE-PEG2k-liposomes after systemic administration. To conclude, pSar-lipid enable efficient mRNA delivery, and can substitute PEG-lipids in lipid formulations for controlled protein expression within the CNS.Drug Delivery Technolog

ART: A machine learning Automated Recommendation Tool for synthetic biology

Biology has changed radically in the last two decades, transitioning from a descriptive science into a design science. Synthetic biology allows us to bioengineer cells to synthesize novel valuable molecules such as renewable biofuels or anticancer drugs. However, traditional synthetic biology approaches involve ad-hoc engineering practices, which lead to long development times. Here, we present the Automated Recommendation Tool (ART), a tool that leverages machine learning and probabilistic modeling techniques to guide synthetic biology in a systematic fashion, without the need for a full mechanistic understanding of the biological system. Using sampling-based optimization, ART provides a set of recommended strains to be built in the next engineering cycle, alongside probabilistic predictions of their production levels. We demonstrate the capabilities of ART on simulated data sets, as well as experimental data from real metabolic engineering projects producing renewable biofuels, hoppy flavored beer without hops, and fatty acids. Finally, we discuss the limitations of this approach, and the practical consequences of the underlying assumptions failing

Synthesis and characterization of bisalkylated polysarcosine-based lipopolymers

The use of PEGylated lipids for the synthesis of stealth liposomes and lipid formulations for nucleic acid delivery has promoted the development of nanoparticle based drugs for cancer therapy, and chronic diseases. Moreover, several other nanomedicines based on these materials have advanced into clinical trails. This enormous success, however, has recently been compromised by the occurrence of immune responses towards PEG, which render pharmacokinetics and can substantially reduce the therapeutic efficiency of drugs. Therefore, alternatives for PEGylated lipids with comparable or even identical solution properties are required. In this work, we report the synthesis of polysarcosine based lipopolymers, which combine the stealth material polysarcosine with bisalkyl-amines. The lipopolymers are obtained by nucleophilic ring opening polymerization of sarcosine NCAs using C-12 and C-18 based bisalkyl amines, namely, didodecyl and dioctadecyl amine. To achieve a controlled living polymerization conditions have been optimized yielding the desired lipopolymers with precise control over chain length, end group integrity and low polymer dispersity (D < 1.2) as demonstrated by size exclusion chromatography, H-1 DOSY nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and MALDI-ToF mass spectroscopy. In addition, the critical micelle concentrations and the incorporation of these lipids in lipid bilayers are reported. Therefore, this work sets the synthetic foundation for the development of alternatives to PEGylated lipids.FWN – Publicaties zonder aanstelling Universiteit Leide