The Rhein Main region with its numerous universities and research institutes, as well as with its research-intensive industry, is a national and global scientific hub with unprecedented width and depth in the RNA field. The goals of the Rhein Main RNA research cluster are science landscape mapping and community shaping.
Since around the year 2000, RNA science has experienced a series of breakthrough discoveries and developments catapulting RNA to the forefront of the scientific world and bringing it even to the attention of the general public. During the last two decades, the world has learned about the major role of non-coding RNA. RNA interference was discovered and research on miRNA has elucidated new modes of cellular regulation (Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine 2006). Aptamers and riboswitches were explored as sensors, drugs, and gene regulatory elements (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1989). The structural complexity of the largest cellular machine, the ribosome, was uncovered (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009). CRISPR/Cas9 became the new standard tool for gene editing (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020). And finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has put RNA viruses in the spotlight and revolutionized the world by the advent of RNA vaccines, which - among other things - required a quantum leap in RNA delivery. The development of RNA vaccines was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine 2023 to Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó, the latter of whom having contributed to the development of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, when she was working at BioNTech in the Rhein Main region.