Solvay is delivering a solution to help prevent and treat genetic-based diseases

Solvay has launched RhodaPhos® Phos Reagent API Grade, aka TgPhos, to help treat genetic-based diseases such as Huntington’s, Crohn’s, breast cancer, Autism and Down Syndrome amongst other illnesses.

TgPhos is a product used to manufacture nucleoside phosphoramidites- monomers which can be used to produce synthetic RNA (ribonucleic acid)- used in antisense gene therapy. This therapy is a form of treatment for genetic disorders or infections, and is already being used by Solvay customers to treat genetic-based diseases.

Antisense therapy goes beyond standard medicine to address these genetic disorders, which can be a result of an error in a patient’s DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) code. Such errors can cause genetic-based illnesses. DNA is transcripted into mRNA (messenger RNA), still with the error, and then potentially into a protein which has an incorrect structure. Antisense RNA works by binding with the mRNA and blocking the translation of a disease-causing protein.

TgPhos is a high purity, phosphorous-based pharmaceutical intermediate, used in the biotechnology industry.

Its applications include the manufacture of intermediates for oligonucleotide (antisense) drugs and in the future could potentially be used in DNA and RNA manipulation.

“RNA is like a ladder. The rungs on the ladder are made up of nucleosides. How these rungs of the ladder are assembled describes codes to make a protein. The rungs are attached to the ladder with a phosphorus molecule to create a sugar-phosphate backbone. Our product forms part of the chemistry that is used to manufacture the phosphorus-containing backbone and enables scientists developing oligonucleotides for antisense drugs to dial up the exact sequence or code in the ladder to treat a specific error in the DNA and therefore a specific genetic disease.

If you find out that you have a genetic-based disorder, in theory, what could happen is that these drugs are used so that your DNA doesn’t exhibit the disease. It’s possible to block the expression of errors in your DNA to avoid the disease after it has been detected,” explains Jeffrey Kolpa, Global Marketing Director, Phosphorous Specialties, Solvay.

Jeffrey further explains that although Solvay doesn’t manufacture the oligonucleotides, or the drugs, it is the Group’s chemistry which allows these different elements to be put together. “Think of the people who are building these drugs as the people who design skyscrapers. Although we don’t build the skyscrapers, we at Solvay provide the steel. This is just as exciting as creating the drugs themselves…”

TgPhos’s key benefits are its high purity level. “If you think of a typical antisense RNA molecule, the ladder may be 20 to 100 rungs and each rung of the ladder needs a phosphorous in its backbone from our product. A small impurity in our phosphorus chemical could get repeated multiple times and results in waste or errors in the code. Our product allows the manufacture of RNA with high purity and integrity,” explains Jeffrey.

The product is also available in industrial quantities for scale-up in production, and it has chemical and thermal stability, promoting safety and prolonged product storage.