Circular RNA: An emerging frontier in RNA therapeutic targets, RNA therapeutics, and mRNA vaccines

Circular RNAs (circRNA) is a class of natural (biogenic) or synthetic closed RNA without 5′ or 3′ ends. Meanwhile, their unique covalently-closed structures of circRNA prevent RNA degradation by exonucleases, thereby empowering them with high pharmaceutical stability and biostability relative to current standard-of-care linear mRNA. Natural circRNA can be non-coding RNAs as well as protein-coding RNA, the latter of which was recently discovered. The physiological functions of biogenic circRNAs, which largely remain elusive, include protein and gene sponges, cell activity modulators, and protein translation. The discovery that the circRNA levels can be correlated with some human diseases empowers circRNA with the potential as a novel type of disease biomarkers and a noncanonical class of therapeutic targets. Recently, synthetic circRNA have been engineered to explore their applications as a novel class of mRNA therapeutics and vaccines. In this review, we will discuss the current understanding of the biogenesis and physiological functions of natural circRNAs, the approaches to circRNA synthesis, and current research in the exploration of endogenous circRNAs as novel therapeutic targets and testing circRNAs as an emerging class of RNA therapeutics and vaccines.