Meeting report ASOBIOTICS 2024: an interdisciplinary symposium on antisense-based programmable RNA antibiotics
- Jorg Vogel1,3,
- Franziska Faber1,
- Lars Barquist2,
- Anke Sparmann2,
- Linda Popella1 and
- Chandradhish Ghosh2
- 1 The Julius Maximilians University of Wurzburg;
- 2 Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research
- ↵* Corresponding author; email: joerg.vogel{at}uni-wuerzburg.de
Abstract
The international symposium ASOBIOTICS 2024 brought together scientists across disciplines to discuss the challenges of advancing antibacterial antisense oligomers (ASOs) from basic research to clinical application. Hosted by the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Wurzburg, Germany, on September 12-13th, 2024, the event featured presentations covering major milestones and current challenges of this antimicrobial technology and its applications against pathogens, commensals, and bacterial viruses. General design principles and modification of ASOs based on peptide nucleic acid (PNA) or phosphorodiamidate-morpholino-oligomer (PMO) chemistry, promising cellular RNA targets, new delivery technologies, as well as putative resistance mechanisms were discussed. A panel discussion noted the challenge of nomenclature: antibacterial ASOs lack a single, universally used name. To address this, the term “asobiotics” was proposed to unite a community of like-minded scientists that are committed to advancing ASOs as antimicrobials. A consistent name will simplify literature searches and help scientists and funders appreciate the potential of programmable RNA antibiotics to combat antimicrobial resistance and enable precise microbiome editing.
Keywords
- alternative antibiotics
- antisense oligonucleotide
- antisense technology
- biotechnology
- microbiome editing
- Received December 2, 2024.
- Accepted December 13, 2024.
- Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the RNA Society
This article, published in RNA, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
