Biotechnology company Arecor Therapeutics PLC (AIM:AREC) could expand its portfolio of pharmaceutical technology to encompass cancer vaccines as a result of its in-house research and development activities.
One area that the company is interested in potentially exploring through its approximately 50-strong R&D arm is messenger ribonucleic acid (or mRNA) therapeutics, Arecor’s chief executive Sarah Howell said in an exclusive interview.
This area of drug development expanded during the Covid-19 pandemic, as drug companies developed vaccines that used innocuous mRNA corresponding to viral proteins to trigger an immune response against the virus.
That application has since been applied in oncology, where many pharmaceutical companies are now racing to develop vaccines against certain cancers.
Arecor operates a licensing model, through which it helps pharma companies to develop advanced versions of existing medicines and improve the delivery of certain drugs.
It also has its own research and development activities, where Howell said she is particularly interested in novel biologics and mRNA-related advances.
“I think that still remains an interesting place,” Howell said of mRNA, where pharma companies have branched out from vaccines into oncology.
She cited potential “delivery challenges” of medicines in this unique but growing area of mRNA research.
Another potential application of mRNA technology is in the emerging field of gene therapies, where researchers seek to use similar pathways to help alleviate the symptoms or causes of inherited disease, for example by using copies of encoded information to deliver instructions to cells.