RNAmed – a new gradu­ate pro­gram of the Elite­netzwerk Bayern

ISAR Bioscience is part of the doc­toral pro­gram “RNAmed”, which is fun­ded by the Elite Net­work Bav­aria. Eleven uni­ver­sity research teams from Würzburg, Regens­burg and Munich will cooper­ate with ISAR Bioscience as an indus­trial part­ner. The goal of the pro­gram is to train doc­toral stu­dents in the new research field of RNA-based medicine.

RNA-based agents have achieved a high pro­file as novel corona vac­cines. How­ever, their import­ance goes far bey­ond that: RNA-based thera­peut­ics have been developed for sev­eral dis­eases in recent years. In prin­ciple, it is con­ceiv­able to use novel RNA drugs to switch off or on any pro­tein in the human body and, moreover, to inter­fere with the diverse reg­u­lat­ory mech­an­isms of vari­ous RNAs. Mean­while, it is becom­ing increas­ingly clear that RNA is poised to become another import­ant class of molecules for the dia­gnosis, pre­ven­tion and treat­ment of disease.

RNAmed takes a hol­istic approach to equip PhD stu­dents with the neces­sary know­ledge and skills in the rap­idly grow­ing field of RNA-based medi­cine. We are cur­rently train­ing a group of inter­na­tional PhD stu­dents who will work in this excit­ing research area and advance pre­ci­sion medi­cine and tar­geted molecu­lar ther­apies. The inter­na­tional and inter­dis­cip­lin­ary nature, diverse net­work­ing, extra-cur­ricular activ­it­ies and the goal of phar­ma­ceut­ical-phar­ma­co­lo­gical trans­la­tion are key fea­tures of RNAmed. The pro­gram is sched­uled to begin in Decem­ber 2022.