Marieke De Bock

Marieke De Bock is a graduate student in chemical engineering whose research addresses the urgent need for efficient and scalable production of RNA-based therapeutics. Her research focuses on optimizing in vitro transcription systems to reduce impurities, improve poly(A) tail uniformity, and lower reagent costs—challenges that are critical to enabling broader access to mRNA therapies. Marieke has developed novel mechanistic models to understand and minimize the formation of double-stranded RNA and applied population balance models to analyze poly(A) tail heterogeneity. To validate her work, she analyzed data from high-performance liquid chromatography files and streamlined the extraction by creating a MATLAB tool. As a MathWorks Fellow, she will expand her work to include immobilized DNA in vitro transcription reactors, using MATLAB for kinetic modeling, analysis, and finite element simulations. She will employ built-in numerical solvers and the Finite Element Method Operations Toolbox to explore flow dynamics and optimize reactor design. Marieke’s work could dramatically reduce production costs and help make advanced gene therapies more accessible worldwide.