Lipid M3 is a novel ionizable lipid. Lipid M3's primary role is to enable the efficient co-encapsulation and delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 components—Cas9 mRNA and sgRNA targeting the VEGFA gene—into human retinal endothelial cells. M3 facilitates critical steps for successful gene editing, including stabilizing the nucleic acid cargo, promoting cellular uptake, and enabling effective endosomal escape to release the payload into the cytoplasm. This results in high gene-editing efficiency (indel frequency ~28.7%). A single intravitreal injection of the M3-F4 LNP carrying this CRISPR system demonstrated potent therapeutic effects in mouse models of diabetic retinopathy by significantly inhibiting pathological neovascularization and vascular leakage, while maintaining excellent biocompatibility.
