Nucleic Acid Delivery Consortium

An academic-industry consortium focused on the challenge of delivering nucleic acid-based therapies to specific target organs, tissues, and cells

Nucleic acid therapies are emerging as a revolutionary class of medicines. Using engineered DNA or RNA molecules, they treat diseases at their genetic source, thus offering potential cures for a large variety of disorders, ranging from genetic disorders to cancers and infectious diseases. Different technologies, including mRNA, short interfering RNAs (siRNA), antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs), and CRISPR-based gene editors have been developed to modulate, replace, or edit genetic code, with the first approved therapies seeing tremendous successes. However, all nucleic acid therapies in development are facing a common bottleneck – they cannot or very inefficiently reach the target organs, tissues and cells most affected by diseases.

To create new inroads into this problem, the Nucleic Acid Delivery Consortium, coordinated at the Wyss Institute, is convening experts in the greater Boston technology system and beyond. Composed of Wyss researchers who are developing new nucleic acid therapies and drug delivery technologies, experts from Wyss spin-out companies that advance new nucleic acid therapies and nucleic acid delivery, synthesis and analysis platforms, and industry experts from biotech/pharma, the Consortium is building a brain trust around specific delivery challenges that can help unlock novel solutions.