Antibody immunotherapy is revolutionizing modern medicine. The field has advanced dramatically over the past 40 years, driven in part by major advances in isolation and manufacturing technologies that have brought these important biologics to the forefront of modern medicine. However, the global uptake of monoclonal antibody (mAb) biologics is impeded by biophysical and biochemical liabilities, production limitations, the need for cold-chain storage and transport, as well as high costs of manufacturing and distribution. Some of these hurdles may be overcome through transient in vivo gene delivery platforms, such as non-viral synthetic plasmid DNA and messenger RNA vectors that are engineered to encode optimized mAb genes. These approaches turn the body into a biological factory for antibody production, eliminating many of the steps involved in bioprocesses and providing several other significant advantages, and differ from traditional gene therapy (permanent delivery) approaches. In this review, we focus on nucleic acid delivery of antibody employing synthetic plasmid DNA vector platforms, and RNA delivery, these being important approaches that are advancing simple, rapid, in vivo expression and having an impact in animal models of infectious diseases and cancer, among others.
Key PointsDirect in vivo delivery of synthetic nucleic acidencoded antibodies employing plasmid DNA [plasmid DNA-encoded monoclonal antibodies (pDNA-mAbs)] and messenger RNA-encoded monoclonal antibodies (mRNA-mAbs) platforms represent new approaches for the in vivo delivery of antibody-like biologics.While there are more preclinical data using pDNA-mAbs, both platforms have made significant progress and are demonstrating promising efficacy in infectious disease and cancer studies in small and large animal models.These platforms have advantages such as rapid product development and simpler manufacturing processes, yet they represent different strategies for deployment, with unique advantages and challenges.