Everyday Rna: The Future Of Rna Medicine

This book describes the development of biological RNA therapeutics their potential to transform modern medicine. The book is intended to be accessible to a scientifically literate layperson but could also be used in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It is divided into three parts. The first section introduces the inner workings of RNA in our cells, how it is produced, what it is used for, and what happens when things go wrong. This section will familiarize the reader with the general principles of RNA biology and provide context through a few well-known diseases. The second section focuses on emerging RNA therapeutics, including antisense oligonucleotides, double-stranded RNAs, and now the now widespread use of mRNA vaccines. The final section describes RNA-guided genome editing as a new therapeutic intervention. This section focuses on CRISPR-cas9, how RNA acts to guide the enzyme to mutated DNA, and the potential for this approach to combat diseases that have long plagued the medical community. The book is intended to provide an honest appraisal of the potential of RNA medicine, the upsides as well as the challenges in an easy-to-understand format that will be useful to all.

Professor Sean P Ryder graduated summa cum laude from the University of New Hampshire in 1995 with a B.Sc. in Biochemistry. He studied the mechanisms of RNA folding and catalysis in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, earning a PhD in 2001. He performed post-doctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute, where he was awarded a Damon Runyon fellowship to study post-transcriptional regulation and RNP assembly. He joined the faculty of the UMass Chan Medical School in 2005, where he is now a Full Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biotechnology, as well as Vice-Chair for Outreach. In his spare time, he is a singer-songwriter specializing in the Americana genre, releasing multiple singles, an EP, and one album to date.