Turning patients into their own drug factories

Our ambition for in vivo expressed biologics (IVEBs) is a potentially transformational approach to medicine. The underlying principle of IVEBs involves introducing the genetic code for a therapeutic biologic into the patient’s body and enabling their own tissues to produce the therapeutic biologic as required. Various approaches to introducing the genetic code into the specific organs or tissue types are being explored and include viral vectors, DNA vectors and mRNA.

While the traditional route for generating antibodies and scaling up the process to deliver to patients can be time-consuming, IVEBs have the potential to be developed and introduced into patients at a much faster pace, making them an ideal platform for pandemic response. Custom-designed IVEBs also have the potential to target disease pathways within as well as outside cells, opening up a whole new range of targets to treat otherwise intractable diseases.

At AstraZeneca, we are leveraging our extensive biologics platforms for the development of proteins, DNA and mRNA, to explore the potential for IVEBs across different therapy areas. This includes building a deeper understanding of the design, delivery and safety of IVEBs as a next generation therapeutic.