High-resolution Fluorescence Imaging of the Assembly of Liposome-RNA Nanoparticles for RNA-based Vaccine and Immunotherapy Michael Chung Authors: Michael Chung, Hector Mendez-Gomez, Elias Sayour, Juan Guan Faculty Mentor: Juan Guan, PhD College: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Department: Physics |
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AbstractThe advent of RNA vaccines has dramatically changed the immunological landscape. RNA vaccines have had remarkable success in the COVID pandemic and shown great promise in personalized cancer immunotherapy by leveraging the patient’s own immune system. Given the importance and potential of such vaccines, it is imperative to understand the fundamental principles underlying these types of vaccine formulations for effective and precise medicine. Our real-time fluorescence imaging provides unprecedented insight into the assembly process of lipid-based RNA nanoparticles, which is the basis of our mRNA vaccine formulation currently being used in patient trials at UF (NCT04573140). We show that a diffusion-limited-assembly process underlies the formation of heterogeneous conglomerates spanning ~1-100 micrometers in size. Further, leveraging physical insights driven by high-resolution imaging and advanced image analysis, we have shown that modulating the assembly process can alter the efficiency of antigen expression in dendritic cells. Our results show the power of direct imaging of the microscopic assembly process which may open up new opportunities for vaccine formulation optimization.
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Poster
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