Delivery technologies such as lipid nanoparticles (LNP) offer significant advantages over the delivery of free RNA for various RNA therapeutic, vaccine, and basic science applications. LNP technologies protect and prevent RNA degradation in the bloodstream, avoid renal clearance of RNA, enable cellular targeting through ligand functionalization and/or the tailoring of LNP physicochemical properties, and mediate cellular entry and endosomal escape to enable RNA release in the cytoplasm.
The mission of the Lipid Nanoparticle (LNP) Core of the Institute for RNA Innovation is to design and implement novel LNP technologies for a range of RNA therapeutic, vaccine, and basic science applications for research groups across the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania. The LNP Core offers a wealth of expertise and resources including combinatorial chemistry of ionizable lipids and polymers, microfluidic technologies for LNP formulation, as well as LNP characterization and scaleup for RNA vaccine and therapeutic studies.
