Alltrna Featured on Fast Company’s 2024 World Changing Ideas List for Advancing a Universal tRNA Medicine for Stop Codon Disease

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 14, 2024 – Fast Company has recognized Alltrna as part of its 2024 list of World Changing Ideas in the Science and Technology category. Alltrna has been recognized for its scientific breakthroughs in advancing new tRNA therapeutics that pave the way for a universal genetic medicine to treat thousands of different genetic diseases, both rare and common.

“When developing treatments for the 6,000-plus rare and ultra-rare genetic diseases that exist, the disease-by-disease, gene-by-gene approach remains clinically challenging and prohibitively expensive to develop new genetic medicines for these small patient populations, despite the urgency that exists to address all these diseases,” said Michelle C. Werner, CEO of Alltrna and CEO-Partner of Flagship Pioneering. “We are leveraging the power of tRNAs to transform the drug development paradigm from gene-centric to gene-agnostic and accelerate new therapies for 30 million or more patients whose genetically driven disease can be classified under Stop Codon Disease.”

Stop Codon Disease encompasses thousands of rare and common diseases that stem from premature termination codons (PTC) caused by a nonsense mutation, where the code for an amino acid has been mutated into a premature “stop” codon. This results in a truncated or shortened protein product with no or altered biological activity that causes disease. Approximately 10% of all people with a genetic disease have Stop Codon Disease, representing approximately 30 million people worldwide. Alltrna is engineering tRNA medicines that can read these PTC mutations and deliver the desired amino acid, thereby restoring the production of the full-length protein and resolving the cause of the disease.

For this year’s World Changing Ideas Awards, a panel of Fast Company editors and reporters selected winners from a pool of more than 1,300 entries across climate, social justice, wellness, politics, technology, corporate social responsibility, and more. Several new categories were added this year, including beauty and fashion, health products, health services, materials, and science and technology.

“I was struck this year by the global sweep of the honorees,” says Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan. “It’s endlessly inspiring to see how the world is coming together to devise inventive solutions to our most challenging problems. We need ideas from everywhere, and this year’s World Changing Ideas Awards are an extraordinary encapsulation of the innovation and creativity that is so abundant around the globe.”

About Alltrna

Alltrna unlocks tRNA biology to treat disease. The company’s platform incorporates AI/ML tools to develop and deliver diverse programmable molecules with broad therapeutic potential. Alltrna has an unprecedented opportunity to advance a single tRNA medicine to readthrough premature stop codons and unify treatment across a wide range of diseases with the same underlying genetic mutations. Alltrna was founded in 2018 by Flagship Pioneering. For more info, visit www.alltrna.com.

About Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Award

World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and bold concepts that make the world better. Judges choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. With the goals of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to work on solving the problems that affect us all. For the full list of 2024 World Changing Ideas, click here.

About Fast Company

Fast Company is the only media brand fully dedicated to the vital intersection of business, innovation, and design, engaging the most influential leaders, companies, and thinkers on the future of business. Headquartered in New York City, Fast Company is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with our sister publication Inc., and can be found online at www.fastcompany.com.

Media Contacts

Jessica Yingling, Ph.D., Little Dog Communications Inc., jessica@litldog.com, +1.858.344.8091

Josephine Zorbo, Ph.D., Flagship Pioneering, Jzorbo@flagshippioneering.com