Minimalist mRNAs: A fast track to cancer vaccines

The manuscript by Esprit et al. analyzes the relevance of different elements of in vitro-transcribed (IVT) mRNAs in order to simplify their use as cancer vaccines.1 The authors concluded that some elements generally considered stabilizing —such as 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs) and the poly(A) tail— could be dispensable for mRNAs used to express small antigens by antigen-presenting cells (APCs). In addition, they developed a simple method for generating synthetic DNA templates (SDTs), accelerating the production of small mRNAs and allowing rapid high-throughput screening of cancer neoepitopes.