Mirna Therapeutics, Inc. announced today the publication of new results in the journal Molecular Therapy demonstrating how a neutral lipid emulsion facilitates the systemic delivery of tumor suppressor miRNA mimics and reduces the tumor burden in the lungs of mice.
The publication resulted from a collaboration with the laboratory of Frank Slack, Ph.D. at Yale University, New Haven, CT. The two teams used a transgenic mouse model of lung cancer to demonstrate that intravenous administration of lipid-formulated miRNA mimics induces a specific RNA interference response in cancer cells and inhibits tumor growth.
The new work features miRNA mimics modeled after the natural tumor suppressors let-7 and miR-34, two of the Company's lead therapeutic compounds in development. "Both miRNAs are reduced in many cancer types and have been implicated in the regulation of cancer stem cells," said Andreas Bader, Ph.D., Associate Director of Research at Mirna. "By adding these miRNAs back to the tumor, we aim to restore cellular pathways that eliminate cancer cells."
"The successful therapeutic delivery of our miRNA mimics in a clinically-relevant tumor model is an important milestone in bringing therapeutic miRNAs to the clinic," commented Paul Lammers, M.D., President and CEO of Mirna. "These data add to the increasing body of evidence that our technology can be applied in a therapeutic context. We are pleased with the progress of our pipeline and the development of miRNAs as potential future medicines for cancer patients."
The Company has previously published data showing systemic delivery of miRNA mimics using polymer-based nanoparticles (Takeshita et al., Mol. Ther., 2010) and the neutral lipid emulsion (Wiggins et al., Cancer Res., 2010; Liu et al., Nat. Med., 2011).
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