Technical Glossary and FAQs

• mRNA: messengerRNA (mRNA) is a single-stranded RNA molecule that is complementary to one of the DNA strands of a gene. The mRNA is an RNA version of the gene that leaves the cell nucleus and moves to the cytoplasm where it gets read to generate proteins.
• oligonucleotides: Oligonucleotides, or oligos, is a general term to describe nucleic acid sequences comprised of about three to twenty nucleotides. These molecules represent the in-licenced Pharm-RNA technology from Hudson Institute of Medical Research (HIMR). They are short DNA or RNA molecules that serve as the starting point for many molecular biology and synthetic biology research applications. Pharmorage’s Pharm-RNA oligonucleotides can be considered as having drug-like compositions, targeting specific inflammation receptors.
• Inflammation or inflammatory disease: a general term that applies to autoimmune diseases and chronic conditions in which a person’s immune system, instead of attacking bacteria, viruses or other sources of infection changes to attack the body’s own tissues
• Autoimmune disease: There are more than 80 autoimmune diseases but familiar autoimmune inflammatory diseases include multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and some forms of lupus
• Proteins: Large molecules composed of one or more long chains of amino acids. They are an essential part of all living organisms, especially as structural components of body tissues such as muscle, hair, etc., and as enzymes and antibodies. Proteins are involved in just about all cell functions and are key molecules in living cells.
• TBK1: (TANK-binding kinase 1) is an enzyme with kinase activity. Specifically, it is a serine / threonine protein kinase. It is encoded by the TBK1 gene in humans. This kinase is mainly known for its central role in innate immunity antiviral response. However, TBK1 also regulates cell proliferation, apoptosis, autophagy. Insufficient regulation of TBK1 activity leads to autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases.
• Pharm-RNA: Pharmorage’s synthetic RNA (or oligonucleotide) technology platform. This platform (comes from HIMR) and is focused on the development of synthetically engineered RNA fragments able to bind to the cell’s first line of inflammatory sensors, to either block or trigger their activity.
• Pharm-ISO: This platform comes from Noxopharm’s non-oncology research stream. Pharmorage’s small molecule technology platform focuses on the design of small molecule able to modulate inflammation at the adaptor level of the signaling pathway. These small molecules are designed to interact with key proteins targets (such as TBK1) situated at the crossroads of multiple inflammatory signals.
• Small molecules: Within the fields of molecular biology and pharmacology, a small molecule is a low molecular weight organic compound that may regulate a biological process by binding to a protein target, thereby modulating its activity. Many pharmaceutical drugs are small molecules.