Functional mRNA delivery to hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in vivo

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Gene correction of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) is a promising therapeutic approach for multiple disorders. Current methods, however, require HSC collection from patients, gene correction during ex vivo culture, and re-infusion of corrected HSC into patients conditioned with chemotherapeutic agents. These approaches are complex, and the conditioning creates toxicities. We show that a lipid nanoparticle (LNP) can deliver mRNA encoding a reporter or a gene editing protein to HSC, with one injection transfecting ∼25% of mouse HSC, and repeated doses resulting in higher editing efficiencies. We also demonstrate LNP-driven in vivo mRNA delivery to HSC in non-human primates and humanized mice. These results demonstrate a translatable approach to deliver mRNA encoding therapeutic proteins, or gene correcting tools, to HSC that do not require cell culture or toxic conditioning. One-Sentence Summary LNP can deliver functional mRNA to mouse, non-human primate, and human HSC.