EP 251: Cracking the delivery barrier in genetic medicine with Jagesh Shah of Mirai Bio

This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Jagesh Shah, Chief Scientific Officer at Mirai Bio. They discuss why delivery is a central bottleneck holding back nucleic acid medicines, how Mirai's lipid nanoparticle (LNP) platform is built to reach tissues like adipocytes and T cells, and the machine learning feedback loop the company uses to engineer LNP formulations.Show Notes0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast01:00 Welcome to Jagesh01:40 Why delivery is the main bottleneck for gene therapies03:42 Easier vs harder tissues to target for delivery06:40 Overview of Mirai's modular delivery platform 09:02 Comparing viral vectors and lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) 12:18 Different approaches for targeting adipocytes and T cells with LNPs15:49 Mirai's machine learning (ML) feedback loop for optimizing LNP formulation20:50 Why lipid chemistry is still hard for ML to learn and factors affecting LNP tropism24:35 Jagesh's path from academia to Mirai27:23 Mirai's platform business model and how it lowers risk29:13 What industry partnerships with Mirai look like31:41 Mirai's next frontier of delivery to muscle tissue and the brain 34:40 Cargo size and immunogenicity of LNPs vs AAV 36:00 Why the field needs to close the regulatory pace gap 37:19 Closing remarksFind out more:Mirai Bio