An undisclosed amount of seed funding has been provided by two UK investors for a start-up gene therapy company that is working on a concept for preventing nerve damage in glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide.
Spark Therapeutics Inc said it plans to seek marketing approval in the US next year for a gene therapy following a Phase 3 trial in which the experimental treatment helped restore vision to patients with an inherited eye disorder.
Novadip Biosciences SA, a spinout from the University of Louvain and the Saint-Luc University Hospital, has raised €28 million in a Series A financing round to develop a therapy for bone defects that is based on adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells.
ReNeuron Plc has outlined a three-year plan for the development of its stem-cell therapy portfolio that would, if successful, lead to regulatory applications for products in both stroke and retinitis pigmentosa. To support this development, it is proposing to raise £68.4 million in a share placement.
Juno Therapeutics Inc, which has technology for genetically engineering T cells, has teamed up with Fate Therapeutics Inc to find out whether there is a role for small molecules in improving the profile of engineered T cells as therapies. The four-year collaboration takes T cell immunotherapy one step further by potentially introducing new modulators into the mix of technologies that are now being investigated globally for a wide range of cancers. The collaboration was announced on 6 May.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a special role in drug development particularly in the field of advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs). With small numbers of staff, many of whom are scientists, they are in a unique position to drive medical innovation.
One of Japan’s biggest industrial concerns, Fujifilm Holdings Corp, has expanded further into regenerative medicine with the acquisition of Cellular Dynamics International Inc, a developer of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). CDI was founded by the stem-cell pioneer James Thomson.
UniQure NV has secured a gene therapy agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company in cardiovascular disease, its first major commercial deal since winning regulatory approval in 2012 for Glybera, a gene therapy for lipoprotein lipase deficiency.
The cohort of companies developing products for treating cancer with genetically engineered T-cells has increased with the announcement that Merck Serono and Intrexon Corp will collaborate to generate new drug candidates using the technology.
Research by Douglas Melton of Harvard University and colleagues showing that insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells can be created in a laboratory has reached the stage of commercialisation with the launch of a new company aimed at bringing a cell therapy for diabetes into human trials.