Ray Therapeutics Inc. has been awarded a $4 million grant by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to help advance development of the company’s optogenetics technology platform and support progression of RTX-021 for the treatment of geographic atrophy, the advanced form of age-related macular degeneration.

Takara Bio Inc. has announced the development of a novel adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector, Sonuaav, which exhibits high gene transfer efficiency into inner ear tissues, with a collaborator at Juntendo University School of Medicine.

Investigators at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have generated a chimeric monkey by injecting an embryonic stem cell into the morula, which is an extremely early embryo consisting of 16 to 32 cells. The animal survived for only 10 days, and it is not the first live birth of a chimeric primate. But it is the first such chimera with contributions from an embryonic stem cell, and that stem cell contributed a far higher proportion of cells in the newborn than have been achieved in previous attempts at creating chimeras.

Researchers from Coave Therapeutics SA presented a novel conjugated AAV (coAAV)-GBA1 candidate for the treatment of patients suffering from PD related to GBA1 mutations.

Approximately 2% to 6% of familiar dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) cases are caused by inherited mutations in the RBM20 gene, which encodes the RNA binding motif 20 (RBM20), a splicing factor that regulates the splicing of several targets involved in the regulation of sarcomeric structure and calcium handling in the myocardium.

At the 30th Annual Congress of the European Society for Gene and Cell Therapy in Brussels this week, researchers presented both preclinical and clinical strategies for applying gene therapy to a functional HIV cure. At a Wednesday session on Infectious Diseases & Vaccines, Alessio Nahmad, of Tabby Therapeutics Ltd., described using B cells edited to express broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) 3BNC117 to deliver high titers of antibodies in mice.

Tenaya Therapeutics Inc. has received clearance from the FDA of the company’s IND application to initiate clinical testing of TN-401.

Fabry disease is a rare X-linked lysosomal storage disorder where a deficiency in α-galactosidase A (GLA) results in the pathological accumulation of globotriaosylceramide (Gb3 or GL-3) and other glycosphingolipids in vascular endothelial cells, nerve cells, cardiomyocytes and renal cells.