Technology relies on hydrodynamic intravascular injection.
Mirus Bio’s patent covering the administration of RNAi-inducing molecules via hydrodynamic intravascular injection has been approved. “A key bottleneck impeding the progress of the groundbreaking field of RNA interference has been the lack of effective delivery methods,” points out Russell Smestad, president of Mirus Bio. “This delivery breakthrough combined with RNAi creates a powerful discovery research tool for studying gene function in animal models and in the long term, might be used for certain human therapeutic tissues.”
Hydrodynamic intravascular injection is a method to deliver nucleic acids through the bloodstream to surrounding cells and tissues. Normally, standard injection of DNA or RNA into a vein or artery would result in the nucleic acids being retained within the blood vessel until degraded and filtered out of the body.
However, according to Smestad, researchers at Mirus Bio, together with collaborators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discovered that rapid injection of a large volume of nucleic acid-saline solution combined with simultaneous mechanical or biological alteration of the permeability of the vessel wall enabled the DNA/RNA to migrate into the surrounding tissue cells. This enables regional delivery throughout an entire limb or other tissue rather than being localized to a single point of injection as happens with a needle and syringe.
