To overcome the problems of existing methods, we looked at endometriosis from a fresh point of view: it is not hormone dependent only. Rather, it is also influenced heavily by immune dysregulation. While many theories remain to explain how the disease is established, we realised from our literature review that there is ectopic tissue in the peritoneum, and that it isn’t cleared up due to dysfunction of the immune system, leading to the chronic inflammation that is characteristic to endometriosis. We started collating literature to identify the targets of our treatment. The downregulation of chemokine IL-8 had the most favourable evidence in suppressing Endometriosis. We brainstormed various methods, including exosomes with miRNA, targeted fusion proteins, taking out cells and reinjecting them after genetic modification, etc. But the problem seemed to be that all of them were too expensive and had been tried without remarkable success. It was then that we were recommended to use LNPs for delivery of drug substance, which we later decided would be mRNA. Our Project, MetraMorpheus stems from the question “What if we make the defective tissue treat itself?” This can be an effective solution, eliminating the need for expensive therapies.
From this inspiration, we setup our project