How This $100 mRNA Drug Kicked Off A New Era of Medicine

Name: How This $100 mRNA Drug Kicked Off A New Era of Medicine
Uploaded: 2026-04-03T17:21:03.000Z
Duration: 9 min 8 s
Channel: Core Memory

Core Memory April 3, 20269m

Topics10

Boston and Cambridge as Biotech Hubs0:02 mRNA Vaccines and the Pandemic1:00 Introduction to Strand Therapeutics and Jake Becraft1:30 Moderna's Breakthrough and mRNA Basics2:30 Strand's Precise mRNA Cancer Therapy3:01 Clinical Trial Results in Skin Cancer4:00 Boston's History and Strand's Broader Vision5:31 Lab Processes for Tumor Analysis6:31 Manufacturing Scalability and Costs8:01 Future Potential8:30

In a Nutshell

Strand Therapeutics, founded in 2017 in Boston's biotech hub, pioneers precise mRNA therapies that activate only in cancer cells, instructing tumors to produce immune-recognizing proteins while sparing healthy tissue. In a skin cancer trial, a single $100-200 dose injection into one metastatic tumor led to all tumors vanishing in a stage-four patient previously given months to live. With scalable manufacturing and plans to expand beyond oncology, Strand aims to usher in a new era of affordable, targeted medicine.

AI-Generated Notes

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Boston and Cambridge have an excessive number of top universities, running over with biotech-minded humans. Everyone here seems to have a PhD or two. Nerds are celebrated. Even bike racks are shaped like molecules. Boston can be too sedate and structured. Biotech startups here do not move as fast or take as much risk as Silicon Valley counterparts. The baggage of tradition can be self-defeating. Every now and then, someone thinks big.

Today, our nation has achieved a medical miracle. We have delivered a safe and effective vaccine in just 9 months. A few years ago, there was a pandemic, and mRNA vaccines appeared out of nowhere to thwart it.

I think it's fair to say you guys are trying to cure cancer. Yeah, as a place to start. This is Jake Becraft, co-founder and CEO of Strand Therapeutics. My LinkedIn says 'making medicine move faster.' I view mRNA as the future infrastructure of medicine, and that's what we're building. Founded in 2017, Strand was working on mRNA technology before the world knew it was a thing. I moved to Boston to do my PhD starting in 2013. My PhD lab was six floors below a startup that had just come out of stealth: Moderna.

Massachusetts-based drug maker Moderna announced its vaccine is nearly 95% effective. They were doing mRNA technology. mRNA is an incredibly promising tech. It is a very fancy way to deliver proteins into a cell. The M in mRNA stands for messenger. mRNA delivers instructions to cells, telling them what proteins to make.

Becraft and co-founders thought they could use mRNA to create very precise medicines. For a cancerous tumor, they want a therapy that goes straight for the tumor and leaves the rest of the body alone. We're trying to get the mRNA to go into the tumors, have the tumors create a protein that the immune system will then recognize and come kill those cells because we want to take the tumors out. Tumors can be all over the body, deep inside, in the lungs, in the liver, and you don't want the immune system attacking healthy cells. That's where toxicities associated with cancer drugs come from. We want to program the messenger RNA to say, 'I'm inside a cancer cell. I should actuate my program and cause this protein to be produced.' But if it ends up in a liver cell or kidney cell, nothing happens. The program is inert. No protein that causes the immune system to respond is produced. We spent 6 years before the company started working on that tech, and then the last 6 years perfecting it and now taking it into patients.

Some of Strand's most impressive work is from a clinical trial in Australia around skin cancer. Our first program in the clinic has treated about 35 patients so far, most with stage four melanoma resistant to existing therapies. This is from the first cohort starting summer last year. This patient had stage four aggressive metastasis: started with melanoma on skin that metastasized into bones, muscles, and lungs. All smaller black masses are the tumors, showing the absolute extent of disease. We injected our drug into a single one of these tumors, then every 3 weeks the patient comes in. Between one injection and the next, all tumors disappeared. When this patient entered our trial last summer, it was unlikely they would make it to Christmas. Instead, at Christmas last year, they had no detectable tumors. Ideally they're going to see Christmas this year and many more years to come.

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How This $100 mRNA Drug Kicked Off A New Era of Medicine

Boston and Cambridge as Biotech Hubs00:02

mRNA Vaccines and the Pandemic01:00

Introduction to Strand Therapeutics and Jake Becraft01:30

Moderna's Breakthrough and mRNA Basics02:30

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