In the past decades, drug developers have introduced new ways to deliver several different types of drugs to specific cells and tissues, creating new vaccines, cancer treatments, genetic medicines and more.
As game-changing as these targeted medicines are, many barriers – most notably carrying capacity, immunogenicity and tropism – still limit their therapeutic potential.
Current vector technologies
But what if we could harness the power of viruses naturally resident in humans to address the limited breadth, inability to redose, and poor tolerability hindering today’s targeted medicines?
Over the past few decades, virologists have worked to illuminate the ‘viral dark matter’ associated with humans, uncovering an expansive and diverse human virome. Notably, some of these viruses are harmless and can live within us for extended periods without detrimental outcomes.
Virologists at Ring uncovered two families of diverse viruses that constitute the majority of the human commensal virome. These viruses have attributes that make them attractive for use as vectors for targeted medicines, including:
We have harnessed these viruses to create a revolutionary programmable platform that is unencumbered by limitations of traditional vector technologies.
