Mercurna Awarded Health~Holland Funding to Advance Targeted RNA Therapies for Kidney Disease

Mercurna has been awarded funding through the Health~Holland SME Call for its project "PREDIKT-RNA - Peptide-REDirected Kidney Targeting for RNA-based treatment of renal inflammation." The project will be conducted in collaboration with Radboud university medical center (Radboudumc).

Inflammatory kidney diseases are a major cause of chronic kidney disease that ultimately leads to kidney failure, where patients are dependent on dialysis or kidney transplantation. Although RNA-based medicines have shown tremendous potential in recent years, their application in kidney disease has been limited by the lack of efficient and selective delivery technologies.

The funded project aims to address this challenge by developing a kidney-targeting platform that enables the tissue-specific delivery of RNA therapeutics. The technology is based on our proprietary kidney-homing peptides that can direct therapeutic nucleic acids to specific kidney tissue. 

The collaboration combines Radboudumc's expertise in peptide biology and nanomedicine with Mercurna's capabilities in targeted RNA delivery and translational drug development. The project is expected to generate proof-of-concept data for kidney-targeted RNA therapeutics and further strengthen the translational and commercial potential of Mercurna's platform. 

"We are grateful for the support from Health~Holland and excited to further develop this innovative approach together with Radboudumc. The project represents an important step towards unlocking the full potential of RNA therapeutics for kidney diseases," said Jürgen Dieker, CSO of Mercurna.