Exploring the Versatility of Lipid Nanoparticles in Drug Discovery

February 21, 2024

Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) have emerged as a compelling drug delivery system, offering significant advantages. Today, we'll delve into what makes LNPs so intriguing and explore why they are gaining traction in the pharmaceutical industry.

Advantages of Lipid Nanoparticles:

  1. Targeted Delivery: Surface motifs allow for targeting specific cells and with this targeting capability you can reduce off-targeting effects so there'll be less side effects to your drug and less drug would be needed.
  2. Great Half-Life: Oftentimes the nanoparticles will have a polyethylene glycol (PEG) serface modification which will allow for immune cell evasion.
  3. Payload Versatility: LNPs are able to carry multiple types of payload, including mRNA which often undergoes degradation in the body. Nanoparticles can protect this cargo from degradation, allowing for a therapeutic that would usually be challenging to use.
  4. Enhanced Cell Uptake: They have improved cell uptake, and with that you can control when the drug is released so you can allow the nanoparticle to be uptaken by the cell and then release the cargo once it's in the cell

Moreover, the endorsement of LNPs by the FDA is exemplified by the successful deployment of COVID-19 vaccines developed by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer.

LNP Experimental Workflow Captured in ELN:

  • LNP Components: LNPs are composed of a lipid mix. Most commonly is nucleic acid payload. The lipid mix can include an ionizable lipid, phospholipid, helper lipid, and stabilizer lipid. Several include cholesterol, or a modified cholesterol, but doesn't necessarily have to include all those.
  • Preparation Methods: LNPs are very modular and so they can be mixed, matched, and modified. You can have the same components but adjust how the formulation is made and it’ll result in a very different nanoparticle that may have different characteristics that you're looking for. You could adjust the size, the surface potential, any motifs on the surface of the nanoparticle, all to try to meet your need and provide a good drug delivery system.

Scilligence ELN Approach:

At Scilligence, our Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) offers comprehensive support for LNP design and development:

  1. Capability to design empty and loaded lipid nanoparticles
  2. Our system offers two distinct calculation approaches and they vary based off of the values that the user would have to enter
  3. Ability to handle multiple ionizable lipids and APIs in the nanoparticle design
  4. Retrieve component information directly from your Scilligence RegMol. Just like with the ADC you can register your components so all of your lipids and your RNA using HELM and being able to pull that into ELN to design your lipid nanoparticle
  5. Ability to register your lipid nanoparticle directly from ELN - Available in Version 7.3
  6. Track assays and stability with our suite of apps (ELN, RegMol, and Inventory) - Available in version 7.3

Here is a short ELN demo showcasing the LNP mole% form:

If you have any inquiries regarding how we can enhance support for your scientific workflows or any of our modules, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected].