What Makes An RNA Platform Investable? Lessons From The Last Wave Of Biotech Financing

By William Soliman, Ph.D., BCMAS, founder & CIO, White Manna Capital

In this installment of Soliman Says…, William Soliman, Ph.D., BCMAS, founder & CIO of White Manna Capital, examines how investor expectations around RNA therapeutics have evolved beyond scientific novelty toward platform scalability, manufacturability, delivery infrastructure, and long-term commercial defensibility. From oncology and obesity to neurology and infectious disease, Soliman explores where RNA platforms are attracting capital, and what now separates truly investable companies from the rest of the biotech field.

From Scientific Promise To Investor Scrutiny

The RNA revolution promised to fundamentally reshape medicine and as we will outline, it clearly has. From the rapid global validation of mRNA vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic to the growing emergence of RNA interference, circular RNA, gene editing delivery systems, and programmable therapeutics, investors once viewed RNA platforms as the next great frontier in biotechnology.

Yet as capital markets tightened and biotech valuations corrected, the industry entered a new phase of scrutiny. Scientific novelty alone was no longer enough. Investors began asking harder questions about scalability, durability of intellectual property, manufacturing feasibility, delivery technologies, clinical differentiation, and commercial applicability beyond a single asset.

In today’s financing environment, the companies attracting serious institutional capital are not simply those with compelling science, but those demonstrating that their RNA platforms can repeatedly generate clinically meaningful, economically viable, and strategically defensible therapeutics across multiple disease areas.

Why Platform Durability Now Matters More Than Novelty

Today’s biotech investors are no longer funding RNA companies based solely on scientific excitement. Increasingly, capital is flowing toward platforms capable of generating multiple clinically and commercially viable therapeutics across diverse indications.

The most successful RNA companies are those that can demonstrate not only innovation, but repeatability, scalability, and long-term strategic flexibility. Investors are increasingly evaluating whether RNA platforms possess the manufacturing infrastructure, delivery technologies, regulatory strategy, and intellectual property needed to support durable growth over time.

This evolution reflects a broader shift in biotech financing toward platform economics rather than single-asset speculation.

Oncology Remains The Largest RNA Investment Arena

Oncology continues to dominate pharmaceutical R&D spending, making it one of the most important proving grounds for RNA-based therapeutic platforms.

Roughly 40% of the global pharma pipeline is oncology focused and the major areas attracting capital are antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), bispecific antibodies, cell therapy, radiopharmaceuticals, precision oncology, and AI enabled biomarker discovery. Companies like Merck, AstraZeneca, Roche, Pfizer and BMS are heavily investing in this area.

mRNA technology has a significant influence on several major oncology modalities and although the degree of impact varies given the wide applicability and use of mRNA technology it can be used to do many things, from delivering immune modulation to being used with target tumor sequencing for more personalized and precision-based oncology therapies.

One of the biggest areas is mRNA cancer vaccines where a lot of mRNA investment is happening. Companies are trying to create personalized cancer vaccines, shared antigen vaccines, and prevention therapies. Some of the major players in this area include Moderna, BioNTech and Merck.

Beyond Oncology: RNA Expands Across Major Therapeutic Markets

While cancer remains a major focus, RNA technologies are increasingly being positioned as foundational platforms across some of the largest and fastest-growing sectors in healthcare.

What initially emerged as a vaccine platform has evolved into a broader programmable biologic infrastructure capable of influencing drug development across cardiometabolic disease, immunology, neurology, rare disease, infectious disease, and regenerative medicine.

As investors evaluate the next generation of RNA-focused companies, one of the most important considerations is no longer whether mRNA works, but rather where the technology can create meaningful clinical and commercial advantages over conventional therapeutic approaches.

RNA And The Future Of Cardiometabolic Disease

The explosive growth of obesity therapeutics has created new opportunities for RNA-based technologies to participate in one of the most commercially attractive markets in modern biotech.

Among the most aggressively funded sectors in biotechnology today is obesity and cardiometabolic disease, fueled largely by the success of GLP-1 receptor agonists and the rising obesity epidemic worldwide. mRNA technology may play an important role in developing next generation obesity drugs.

While current market leaders rely primarily on peptide-based therapeutics, RNA technologies are increasingly being explored as a mechanism to extend durability, improve tissue targeting, and potentially reduce manufacturing complexity.

Several companies are investigating mRNA-based approaches capable of inducing endogenous production of metabolic hormones or engineered proteins involved in appetite regulation, insulin sensitivity, and muscle preservation.

Longer term, mRNA platforms may also enable highly personalized metabolic interventions based on genomic or biomarker profiles, particularly as obesity becomes increasingly understood as a multifactorial chronic disease rather than a simple lifestyle condition. Indeed, we have seen that there is a shift to focusing more on target organ damage in obesity rather than weight loss alone.

Immunology And Immune Reprogramming Opportunities

Autoimmune and inflammatory diseases may ultimately become one of the most transformative applications for programmable RNA therapeutics.

In immunology and autoimmune disease, RNA technologies may represent one of the most strategically important future platforms. Traditional biologics for diseases such as psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis require costly manufacturing infrastructure and chronic administration.

mRNA offers the potential to transiently express immune-modulating proteins directly within the body, potentially allowing for more programmable, tunable, and targeted immunologic interventions.

Researchers are also evaluating tolerogenic mRNA vaccines designed to retrain the immune system rather than broadly suppress it. If successful, these approaches could fundamentally alter treatment paradigms across autoimmune disease by moving beyond symptom control toward true immune reprogramming.

Neurology And The Next Frontier Of RNA Delivery

Neurological disease has historically remained one of the most difficult areas in drug development, but advances in RNA delivery technologies are beginning to reshape expectations across the CNS landscape.

Neurology and central nervous system disorders are becoming increasingly important areas for RNA investment. Historically, neurological drug development has been hindered by the complexity of the brain and the difficulty of delivering therapeutics across the blood-brain barrier.

Advances in lipid nanoparticle technology and targeted delivery systems are beginning to change that equation. RNA-based therapeutics are now being explored in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, and Huntington’s disease.

In many cases, RNA platforms offer the ability to modulate previously “undruggable” targets at the genetic or translational level. The growing convergence of RNA therapeutics, biomarker-driven medicine, and AI-enabled neurological diagnostics is likely to make CNS one of the most closely watched sectors in biotech financing over the next decade.

Why Rare Diseases Continue To Attract RNA Capital

Rare diseases remain highly attractive for RNA therapeutics because many are driven by clearly defined genetic abnormalities that can potentially be addressed through targeted modulation of protein expression.

RNA therapeutics can potentially restore, suppress, replace, or modify dysfunctional protein expression without permanently altering DNA. This creates significant flexibility compared to some gene editing approaches while still addressing the underlying biology of disease.

Investors continue to favor rare disease RNA platforms because of their regulatory advantages, accelerated approval pathways, premium pricing dynamics, and potential for platform expansion into multiple indications.

Infectious Disease Beyond COVID-19

The success of mRNA vaccines during the pandemic demonstrated not only the viability of RNA therapeutics, but also the strategic importance of rapid-response manufacturing platforms.

RNA technologies are now being explored for influenza, RSV, CMV, HIV, personalized infectious disease vaccines, and even antimicrobial resistance strategies.

The ability to rapidly design and manufacture RNA constructs provides an unprecedented degree of speed and adaptability that traditional vaccine infrastructure often cannot match. As geopolitical and public health concerns surrounding future pandemics persist, governments and pharmaceutical companies continue investing heavily in scalable RNA manufacturing capabilities.

RNA As A Horizontal Platform Technology

Increasingly, RNA is being viewed not as a single therapeutic category, but as a programmable platform capable of influencing nearly every major area of pharmaceutical innovation.

The COVID-19 pandemic put mRNA technology on the map. This combined with the fact that almost half of global R&D spend is oncology focused and the significant role that mRNA technology plays, makes it clear that mRNA technology is indeed a highly investable platform over the next decade.

Collectively, these trends suggest that RNA is evolving from a single therapeutic category into a horizontal enabling platform capable of influencing nearly every major area of pharmaceutical innovation.

For investors, the most compelling RNA companies may ultimately be those capable of demonstrating not only scientific differentiation, but also broad platform applicability across multiple high-value therapeutic markets.

About The Author:

William Soliman, Ph.D., is the founder & CEO of the Accreditation Council for Medical Affairs (ACMA) and the founder & CEO of White Manna Capital Partners, a biotech/pharma focused hedge fund. The ACMA is the leading life sciences accreditation, certification, and training company in the world and established the first ever certification standards for prior authorization, reimbursement, pharma sales, medical science liaisons, and medical affairs professionals. Soliman is considered a pharmaceutical industry futurist. In March 2021, he testified before the United States Congress’ Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee about the pharmaceutical industry and the importance of professional standards for those who directly engage healthcare providers, like sales representatives. Soliman is a former pharmaceutical executive who held leadership roles at several Big Pharma companies, including Merck, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, and Gilead. He is routinely featured on media outlets such as NewsNation, Fox News, ABC News, Forbes, Al Jazeera, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Business TV, and more. Soliman received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and his bachelor’s degree from New York University.