LONDON – After announcing its $17.4 million series A funding in the midst of pandemic in April, Genespire Srl has now gone public on the preclinical research upon which its programs will be based, presenting the data at last week’s American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) annual meeting.
Kriya Therapeutics Inc., a startup led by former Axovant Sciences Inc. executive Shankar Ramaswamy, has raised $80 million in series A financing expected to help advance a portfolio of gene therapies for diabetes and other chronic conditions.
By delivering the protein follistatin via gene therapy, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis were able to increase skeletal muscle mass, decrease fat, and reverse obesity-related arthritis in mice who developed osteoarthritis as a result of a high-fat diet.
DUBLIN – Dyno Therapeutics Inc., an early stage gene therapy firm applying artificial intelligence to advanced capsid engineering, has entered partnerships with Novartis AG and Sarepta Therapeutics Inc., in ophthalmic indications and muscle diseases, respectively, which have over $2 billion in biobucks attached.
The acceptance by the FDA of Prevail Therapeutics Inc.’s IND for the one-time, fast-tracked gene therapy PR-006 provided hope for 50,000 to 60,000 people in the U.S beset by frontotemporal dementia with the GRN mutation (FTD-GRN), and the New York-based company is moving ahead with a phase I/II experiment called Proclaim.
DUBLIN – Genespire Srl, a Milan-based startup led by gene therapy pioneer Luigi Naldini, is the third company to receive funding from Sofinnova Partners’ Italian €108 million (US$117.5 million) gene therapy fund, the Sofinnova Telethon Fund.
HONG KONG – Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd., Mitsubishi UFJ Capital Co. Ltd. and Nagoya Institute of Technology have kicked off research on a joint project for a gene therapy that could be applied to the restoration of vision.
Avectas Ltd., of Dublin, brought in a $20 million series C financing, ratcheting the total equity investment in the company to $40 million. Privately held Avectas, formed in 2012 as a spin-out from Ireland’s Maynooth University, said it plans to accelerate the clinical translation and commercial scale-up of its cell engineering technology and expand its staffing in Ireland.
It has been more than 200 years since British doctor James Parkinson first identified the symptoms of a condition that he termed shaking palsy; unfortunately, there is still no cure to the disease that carries his name.
LONDON – These are hardly times for a fanfare, but this month saw the unveiling of a new name in bioprocessing, following the formal closing of the $21.4 billion sale of GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences to Danaher Corp. The business, now renamed Cytiva, has turnover of $3.3 billion, nearly 7,000 employees and operations in 40 countries. More than 75% of FDA-approved biologic drugs use its products in their manufacture.
