EP 251: Cracking the delivery barrier in genetic medicine with Jagesh Shah of Mirai Bio

This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Jagesh Shah, Chief Scientific Officer at Mirai Bio. They discuss why delivery is a central bottleneck holding back nucleic acid medicines, how Mirai's lipid nanoparticle (LNP) platform is built to reach tissues like adipocytes and T cells, and the machine learning feedback loop the company uses to engineer LNP formulations.

Show Notes

0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast

01:00 Welcome to Jagesh

01:40 Why delivery is the main bottleneck for gene therapies

03:42 Easier vs harder tissues to target for delivery

06:40 Overview of Mirai's modular delivery platform 

09:02 Comparing viral vectors and lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) 

12:18 Different approaches for targeting adipocytes and T cells with LNPs

15:49 Mirai's machine learning (ML) feedback loop for optimizing LNPformulation

20:50 Why lipid chemistry is still hard for ML to learn and factors affecting LNP tropism

24:35 Jagesh's path from academia to Mirai

27:23 Mirai's platform business model and how it lowers risk

29:13 What industry partnerships with Mirai look like

31:41 Mirai's next frontier of delivery to muscle tissue and the brain 

34:40 Cargo size and immunogenicity of LNPs vs AAV 

36:00 Why the field needs to close the regulatory pace gap 

37:19 Closing remarks

Find out more:

• Mirai Bio