Future Medicines – what have we learned from mRNA vaccines?
The Covid vaccines are estimated to have saved 20 million lives since the start of the pandemic. Two of these vaccines used a revolutionary biological approach to generating a medicine rapidly and flexibly (mRNA), and a revolutionary innovation in delivering these medicines safely and effectively (lipid nanoparticles). This is likely to be the start of a new generation of medicines made from nucleic acids, and the start of a wave of medicines delivered precisely to different organs using new drug delivery carriers. This talk will discuss what is possible now, and what might be in the future.
Prof Peter Simpson is the Director of Peter Simpson Consulting Ltd, a life sciences consultancy that enables innovative new companies who are discovering the medicines of the future. He established one of the UK’s Lighthouse Lab Covid testing facilities at the height of the pandemic, for which he was awarded the Pride of Macclesfield award in 2022; and he was for 5 years Chief Scientific Officer for the UK’s medicines innovaiton agency, Medicines Discovery Catapult.