Manghrani Presents at Inaugural Nucleic Acids Therapeutics Meeting in India

Akanksha Manghrani, a UMD Postdoctoral Research Associate, working in the NIST-IBBR biomanufacturing program under the direction of Dr. Robert Brinson, delivered a talk and presented a poster at the First Regional Nucleic Acids Therapeutics Meeting in Bengaluru, India organized by the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society (OTS). The aim of the regional meeting was to bring together academics and industry experts to promote, discuss and showcase research into the nucleic acids therapeutics – an emerging class of therapeutics with the potential to transform the field of medicine.

Her talk and poster titled ‘Development of NMR Based Tools for Structural Fingerprinting of Oligonucleotide Therapeutics’ focused on the group’s effort to pioneer nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR)-based techniques for characterization and similarity assessment of these drug modalities. As the field is still in its early stages, methods for characterizing these therapeutics are not yet fully developed. In her presentation, she emphasized the importance of robust analytical techniques for higher-order structure characterization and batch-to-batch similarity to drive the field forward. By focusing on her antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) research and NIST-IBBR’s previous short-interfering RNA (siRNA) study, she demonstrated how NMR is uniquely suited to meet both goals in pharmaceutical and regulatory settings. The feedback she received underscored the timeliness and relevance of this research, and she plans to use the valuable insights from conference participants to further inform her work.