Poster Presentation 38th Lorne Cancer Conference 2026

Precision mRNA-LNP therapeutics for cancer (#262)

Seth Cheetham 1 , Hannah Tompkins 1
  1. University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia

The breakthrough success of the COVID19 vaccines demonstrated the limitless potential of mRNA technology. The applications of mRNA technology lie far beyond vaccines for infectious diseases and are set to transform medicine. Unlike conventional drugs mRNA is an information carrying molecule that instruct cells to produce drugs within your own cells, enabling the delivery of therapeutic proteins intracellularly. We have developed an mRNA platform  This talk will cover the diverse applications of mRNA technology and how we are using mRNA drugs to reach previously "undruggable" targets. We have developed a generalizable platform for targeted mRNA-LNP delivery that uses bispecific antibodies (BsAbs) to form a bridge between LNPs and cancer markers. BsAbs can be combined with LNPs or administered first, binding to surface proteins on target cells and later retaining unmodified LNPs in affected tissues. We demonstrate the efficient and cell-type-specific delivery of mRNA-LNPs beyond the liver by targeting tumour markers in vitro and in vivo. This approach is highly effective across a wide range of contexts including diverse non-cancerous primary human cells. Combining bispecific mRNA-LNP targeting with RNA-switches extraordinarily precise cell-targeting. The flexibility of this technology, achieved by substituting the cell-targeting region of the BsAbs, enables the rapid development of next-generation targeted mRNA cancer drugs. Finally, to identify efficient payloads for these precision mRNA-LNP carriers we have performed rational screening, identifying transcription factors that can suppress cancer cell growth and facilitate immune recognition.