Research and Development

Synthetic Results of Oligonucleotides

In recent years, as RNA-related research has made remarkable progress, the demand for long-chain RNA has been increasing. However, chemical synthesis of long-chain RNA is generally known to be very difficult, and there are few reports of the chemical synthesis of RNAs over 50mer.

Although it is possible to chemically synthesize a few mg of long-chain RNA (at lab-scale) by using great excesses of reagent, and by purifying with PAGE or HPLC, manufacturing larger quantities remains very challenging. We must optimize the amount of reagent to create an economically feasible process, and apply preparative chromatography.
Sumitomo Chemical has established an industrial manufacturing process for long-chain RNA that is capable of supplying quantities in kilograms per year.
Examples are shown below.

Example 1: Pre-miRNA (56mer) synthesis in the lab

Pre-miRNA is a precursor of mature-miRNA consisting of about 60 bases of long-chain RNA. 56mer Pre-miRNA 136 has been synthesized with an HPLC purity of 97% or more with solid-phase synthesis using AKTA Oligopilot 100 and purification by column chromatography and lyophilization.

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Example 2: Bonac oligo (53mer) synthesis in the plant

Bonac nucleic acid is a single-stranded RNA oligomer consisting of about 60 bases, developed by Bonac Co. Here is an example of ca.50-chain-length Bonac nucleic acid (Pnk - RNA®) synthesis.

Bonac nucleic acid was synthesized using Oligopilot 400, 93% HPLC purity.

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