Breakthroughs in RNA Science: From Pond Scum to Life-Saving Medicine--Dr. Philip Bevilacqua, Penn State University

Dr. Philip Bevilacqua from Penn State University traces RNA’s origins in outer space to the primordial soup of early Earth to its starring role in today’s medical breakthroughs, offering a plain-language look at how this once-overlooked molecule is now powering CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) gene editing, an improved flu vaccine and the fight against diseases like Ebola.  He spoke at the Telluride Mountain Village Conference Center and veteran broadcast journalists Judy Muller and George Lewis served as moderators.

Transcript

Science Straight Up

Season 7, Episode 5

“Breakthroughs in RNA Science: From Pond Scum to Life Saving Medicine”

Dr Philip Bevilacqua, Penn State University

Moderators: Judy Muller and George Lewis

July 14, 2026

(THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER)

GEORGE: From Telluride Science, this is “Science Straight Up.” I’m George Lewis.

JUDY: And I’m Judy Muller. On this episode, we consider RNA, ribonucleic acid, once thought of as just a supporting player to DNA, copying and pasting genetic information, but now one of the hottest topics in science.

PHIL:  We really live in the age of RNA. We think about RNA not only in medicine and modern life, but RNA as a way for how life could have actually begun.

GEORGE: Dr Philip Bevilacqua  is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University.  He spoke to an audience at the Telluride Mountain Village Conference Center about breakthroughs in RNA science.

PHIL: And this fun title “From Pond Scum to Life-Saving RNA Medicines.”

JUDY: Pond scum refers to the origins of RNA in the primordial soup of early Earth. That is central to answering the ever-intriguing question of how did life begin?

GEORGE: Every year at this time, Telluride Science gathers prominent researchers from all over the world for a series of workshops high up in the Colorado mountains. Dr. Bevilacqua has been a frequent participant.

PHIL: We think about RNA not only in medicine and modern life, but RNA as a way for how life could have actually begun. Okay, and sometimes called the RNA world. So, so I'm going to begin with with a Coloradan, Tom Cech at UC Boulder, and who I had the privilege of being a postdoc with from from 93 to 97 and and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989.

GEORGE: Tom Cech, Phil Bevilacqua’s mentor, won the Nobel prize for discovering that RNA wasn’t just a copycat, replicating genetic information, but could also act as an enzyme..a catalyst..to trigger chemical reactions..that it was far more versatile than science had previously realized.  That led to another hypothesis: that RNA could have been present when life began on Earth, perhaps arriving here from outer space. 

PHIL: Molecules used by modern biology are also found in extraterrestrial objects. So they could have come from outer space, from meteorites, for example.

GEORGE: An idea that was reinforced by samples recovered in 2025 from a NASA probe called OSIRIS-REX.

PHIL: Going to an asteroid called Bennu, sending a spacecraft out. Maybe some of you are familiar with this, and bringing back material from the asteroid. And this is this was sent out in in 2020 in the in the height of the pandemic, came back last year, landed in Utah, parachuted there. It was immediately put into a nitrogen atmosphere, and then chemical analysis was done. And from these rocks were found the building blocks of RNA, which is really amazing. So RNA is can be made spontaneously and found in rocks in outer space.

JUDY: And speaking of the Covid pandemic, we’ve heard a lot about MRNA vaccines that saved millions of lives. And Dr. Bevilacqua says that kind of science will continue to save lives in the future.

PHIL: The fact is that you can treat many viruses, and it saved 20 million lives in the first year of COVID alone, and many experts believe there will be another pandemic in five to 10 years. So we need to be prepared for this. And mRNAs can also treat cancers, and so there have been many companies that have been developed for RNA therapeutics, some for editing the genome, others with mRNA vaccines, and yet yet others with developing microRNAs and and circular RNAs and small molecules. So I just want to say a couple words about mRNA vaccine research. If you read been reading the news, you know like a year and a half ago that the administration canceled $500 million in mRNA vaccine contracts. There's been mRNA vaccine stigmatization in the United States and defunding. But there's really two sides to this, and I'm here hope to bring some good news. That in some ways early on the political attacks crushed the mRNA vaccine revolution, and yet we see mRNA technology also helping to reinvigorate the hunt for cancer vaccines. And just recently, in February of this year, and then more recently in June of this year, the FDA has has unanimously recommended its first vaccine since 2023 which is to treat influenza, and and it has 20% greater efficacy than traditional vaccines.

GEORGE: He also talked about how RNA genetic editing techniques are saving lives, citing the case of “Baby K.J.”, a child born with a rare genetic disorder that made his tiny body intolerant to proteins, causing ammonia to build up. For the first time ever, doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia infused him with specially edited genes.

PHIL: Baby KJ, who has a very rare genetic disease, was healed with the first gene editing treatment, and this is just in May of last year.

JUDY: Baby KJ is still doing fine.  Here’s one of his doctors, Rebecca Ahrens-Niclas, in a video put out by the hospital. 

DR AHRENS-NICLAS: In these really severe metabolic diseases of infancy, we know we have to act quickly to make a difference in the lives of these babies.//KJ received the first infusion of his therapy on February 25th. He’s had quite a nice little growth spurt.  And so the fact that we could give him the protein has helped him develop some nice little chubby cheeks! (laughs)

GEORGE: Phil Bevilacqua says the challenge now is to bring down the astronomical costs of the sort of treatment that baby KJ received.

PHIL: Very rare diseases like his his is one in a million people have it. So, but and but there's there's tens of thousands of such rare diseases, and there's hundreds of thousands of people with these diseases. But right now, in order to make the medicine to go in the technology to go in and do that is very expensive, costing millions of dollars. And so, if we can bring that cost down 10 times to 100,000 down another 10 times to $10,000 you know that's getting to like price less than the price of a car, and so curing cancer, curing rare diseases with gene editing, with with CRISPR, but with other with other technologies. One of my colleagues who's here at the meeting, Pete Beals, talking about using enzymes, ADAR enzymes, to go in and edit the genome specifically and correct little little mistakes, and this has already been been demonstrated to to be effective to to cure sickle cell anemia, for example. And so I think we'll start to see more of that in the next decade.

JUDY:  During the question-and-answer session, George wanted to know how Phil Bevilacqua decided to specialize in RNA research.

GEORGE: Phil, you've been studying RNA since you were doing postdoctorate work in Boulder in your 20s, and you worked with Thomas Check, who won the Nobel Prize. And I'm just wondering what what spurred your initial interest in RNA research? What what got you into that field?

PHIL: I’ve been studying RNA even longer, since I was in graduate school. When I started, I had no way to know that all this that this this would would come to be. I think honestly, I I was trained in more in in physics in in chemistry than biological chemistry, and and I was influenced by a teacher when I was an undergraduate, I took a course, my first course in biochemistry, and he told me about self-splicing RNA and that he drew this curve about the future of RNA and of of biochemistry, and he drew this this exponentially increasing curve and said we were in the early stage, and I really didn't know much, but I needed to do something with my life, and I thought I want to be in a field that's doing this, and and it caught my imagination, and so, so that's where kind of where it started.

JUDY: c What's the most common misconception people have.

PHIL:  The idea that mRNA vaccines were rushed in order to provide something with the with the pandemic, and and in fact Operation Warp Speed, which which really really was this administration's crown jewel to get the get the the vaccines out so quickly, was really important, and and I think the idea that it's going to integrate into our genomes and other conspiracy theories that that RNA is is super dangerous in that way is probably one of the the biggest misconceptions. 

What I can say is is is I am optimistic by pleasantly surprised by the by the response to the mRNA vaccines for for influenza, and so so one maintains hope, and but there you know there's a lot of other countries where RNA medicine we call all this collectively RNA medicine has been really pushed for forward aggressively, and United States is is is has many great companies and and ideas and and efforts that are going forward that you see at the workshop that that I'm part of in nucleic acid chemistry. So so there's lots of reason for optimism. 

GEORGE: You mentioned that mRNA technology is leading to the development of a better flu vaccine, and in years past, we've always been playing catch up with with the viruses, haven't we? Are we better able to catch up now with the flu? 

PHIL: Yeah, I think that that's the idea. And and right now, as I understand, I'm not I'm not an expert on on on flu vaccines, but you have to sort of guess what the latest strain is, what the strain might be in another year. And so here you you can do it more more quickly. Look at what strains are are out there, and even and even develop ones to multiple strains at the same time.  You know, reading about Ebola right now there are no mRNA vaccines, but there's there's efforts towards that, and that's one of the things is to recognize multiple strains at the same time.

JUDY: Back to the basics of pond scum, for just a moment.

PHIL:  Where I'm more comfortable. 

JUDY: Why do you think people care? Why do you think people care about the the role of RNA in the origins of life on the planet? I mean, beyond is it answering that age-old question of how did life begin? We all want to know, or are there practical outcomes of knowing this information?

PHIL: Yeah, I think it's really curiosity. It's one of the, you know, if one looks at like the top five unanswered questions and in the universe, you know, like you know, where'd consciousness come from, etc. Where do but where do we come from, and is there life somewhere else? I don't know that there's there's anything practical about that. I think it's it's purely curiosity driven, and for me that's good enough. I also think it's an unanswerable question. To be perfectly honest with you, it's something where where we can get ideas on on robustness and likelihood of different scenarios of the building blocks coming about and how they would assemble and how life might have begun. But knowing exactly what happened and is probably is probably the details are probably not knowable in that way,

GEORGE: There were a lot of audience members with questions for Dr. Bevilacqua.

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: Can you help us understand where we are on using RNA technology on cancer specifically? What's what's the state of play?

PHIL: Yeah, that's a that's a great question. So, I do know that in the case of like pancreatic cancer, which is a particularly bad one, that the latest numbers I saw is it's gone from you know 85% likelihood of of death down to 50 percent, and and and in triple negative breast cancer, there's also been some vast improvements there as well, and so so the idea is with, so first off, vaccines can be can be caused by viruses, something like 20 percent or something of those are and there's vaccines for that like HPV and and so on, but in in this case it's generally to have the mRNA with an injection which then is through through what what we saw is the central dogma to make the proteins and then again, to allow our natural immune system to be able to respond to that and to be able to kill the cancer-that's the idea. So, so companies like Moderna and BioNTech are actively developing that. So, I think there's reason for hope.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: I'm not a scientist, but could you explain in a little more detail the role of mRNA in the reduction of pancreatic cancer, for example. What do you do with mRNA that helps to produce that result?

PHIL: Thank you for the question. It's it's probably beyond my expertise to answer that in detail, but but with but with any cancer, sort of the idea is the the mRNA is is there, just like the name is the mRNA. The M stands for messenger, so it's a message that's going to produce a protein, and it's really the protein that's important in that process. And then that that protein might be something that's expressed or or made in a cancer cell, and then our immune system will see that, and then that will lead to sorts of acquired immunity, like killer T cells and so on, that can find the cancer cell and kill it because that those the the immune system has been trained on the antigens that that that mRNA through the mRNA vax or the mRNA injection led to that, so it's that sort of idea.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Kind of general question, but do those anti-vaxxers have a good point? Are they like coming from a basis like a foundational, like realistic point, or are they just totally missing? 

PHIL: Yeah, it's it's good to ask that question about anti-vaxxers and and so on. You know, I'm not here to judge anything. I mean, I remember when when the when the pandemic during the pandemic when mRNA vaccines and we had our first first shots and and I happened to be the head of my department at that time and one of the I was talking with one one of the staff who was. Was came from not necessarily anti-vax, but but just questioning all of this and the fact that it happened so quickly, and and just helping them understand. In some in some cases, that leads person to to go ahead and and and get a get a shot. In other cases, it doesn't. And and I know in some cases through those conversations, it was productive and led in that direction. So, I mean, all I can say is is it's important for scientists to to be approachable and to have a discussion and an honest discussion about those things, rather than necessarily forming an opinion about I'm so right because I know the science behind it, but to help everybody, you know, understand, have a discussion, that that would be what I what I would what I'd have to say.

JUDY: Would you think that more education on a national scale would be helpful? Because there were so many people who were distrustful of mRNA vaccines when and we have an epidemic that's killing people. 

PHIL: I think so. That's why I'm here today. Yeah. And and and for exactly that reason. And and I think that those those discussions are are are are important. And and to talk about the the facts and the myths and and so on. Yeah.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Are you using AI models in your field? How is it impacting your field, and how do you expect it to impact the timeline going forward? 

PHIL: Yeah, that's such a great question. It's about AI, artificial intelligence. It's affecting all of science, and and you know I find myself doing more computational work now, and and using AI, you know, I I don't I think AI is really useful. The way I think about it as a novice is, AI can read every paper that's ever been written, and no human being can do that. At the same time, it really can't think in a creative way and create new knowledge, and so I think it can be used really well, and we found it very useful. It's also very dangerous at the same time, and and so trying to to figure out ways to harness that and and and help us move fields forward.

GEORGE: Do you worry about AI hallucinating and making stuff up? We do. 

PHIL: Yeah, for sure, and and and so using multiple search engines and being skeptical because that's what scientists are are. And when we stop being skeptical, that's when we're really getting getting in trouble. And you trust this stuff too much, for sure.

JUDY: Can you tell which of these questions came from Claude? (LAUGHTER) As I admit. 

PHIL: I have to say, Judy, there was there was there was maybe some other people saw this. There was a thing on the New York Times, and it had two short paragraphs, and one was written by AI, and one was written by a famous author, and it was like, can you decide? And I read them both, and I and I nervously picked which one, and I got it right, which made me feel so good. So, but I don't know which ones came from Claude.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: You spoke earlier about gene editing, and I wondered, I'm not sure it is related to mRNA. Is there a is there a connection between the two, and are they searching for similar results?

PHIL: (44:04) Very good question. They're they're they're two different things, and and so the mRNA technology does not edit the genome, does not change the genome, but CRISPR gene editing does, and so and so, when one thinks about that, one has to be very careful about the ethical implications of gene editing, especially germline, and and using it in ways that that scientists have come together in the National Academies, along with philosophers and social scientists, to try to draw lines about when genes should and should not. So now you're getting the ethics because you're talking about should and should not, rather than can and. Cannot be used, so it's sort of widely agreed to you know to to make a baby that has blue eyes or has better athletic ability is is crosses an ethical line, but but if there is something like with baby KJ where potentially you can change a single nucleotide and and cure a devastating disease. That then there's thoughts to to be able to to move forward with that. So so it's it's a it's a really important problem, and it's something that the field has has tried to grapple with and continues to.

GEORGE: CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Try saying that rapidly ten times in a row.  Basically, it uses an enzyme that can cut through genetic material bonded to a piece of RNA that guides the enzyme to the right place to fix the malfunctioning genes within cells. Amazing stuff.

PHIL: CRISPR is a technology, and it really was discovered from basic research, from understanding how bacteria have evolved ways to combat viruses, and so if they're infected with a with a virus, they take a little bit of the information from the virus and put it into their DNA. Believe it or not, and that's like a memory for them, and so an RNA is involved with that. And if they bump into that virus again, they recognize it through base pairing, and they can destroy that.

JUDY: Phil Bevilaqua ended with a plug for a book written by his former mentor, Tom Cech at the University of Colorado.

PHIL: He wrote a book about a year year ago called The Catalyst, which is an introduction, and I recommend that to everybody, especially if all of you are from Colorado. Introduction to RNA for the layperson. And he lays out about 15 Nobel prizes in in RNA directly or indirectly within the last 20 years. And so, yeah, it's kind of a sleeper, right? Because the public knows a lot about DNA. In fact, I've been working in this field, as I said, since since I started in graduate school, and up until I'd say the last five years, if I met one of we all met and would talk about what I did, and I would say, oh, it's like it's like DNA. You know what DNA is, but now I can say RNA, and everybody knows what RNA is because of because of these breakthroughs, especially the mRNA vaccines, probably most famously, but also CRISPR. So it's really sort of more like the vernacular now. And I say that's really been a change in the last maybe five years or so. So yeah, all this has been going on. Yeah. 

GEORGE: Before that, did you feel like you were researching the poor cousin of DNA? 

PHIL: I never felt that way. (LAUGHTER)

JUDY: Well, that's about all the time we've got. We want to make sure we thank our sponsors, the Telluride Mountain Village Homeowners Association and Alpine Bank. 

GEORGE: And please give a big hand to Dr. Philip Bevilacqua for a great lecture. (APPLAUSE CROSSFADE TO THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER)

JUDY: Dr. Bevilacqua appeared before a live audience at the Telluride Mountain Village Conference Center. Our audio engineer was Colin Casanova.

GEORGE: Mark Kozak is CEO and Executive Director of Telluride Science. Cindy Fusting is Managing Director and CFO.

JUDY: Sarah Friedberg is Lodging and Operations Manager and Annie Carlson is in charge of donor relations.

GEORGE: If you’d like to donate to the cause, go to telluridescience-dot-O-R-G. Please tell your friends that’s where they can find our podcasts or on their podcast apps at “Science Straight Up.”

JUDY: And if you have questions or comments, you can email us… science straight up…all one big long word, science straight up at telluridescience-dot-O-R-G. I’m Judy Muller.

GEORGE: And I’m George Lewis, inviting you to join us next time on Science Straight Up.