Sania Therapeutics launches to advance neural circuit dysfunction medicines

Sania Therapeutics, which develops genetic medicines for neural circuit dysfunction, has launched with the unveiling of its platforms at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) conference.

Sania Therapeutics’ approach combines the evolution of adeno-associated viruses (AAV) in human neural circuits, the fundamental components of the nervous system, and tuneable conditionally-activated ion channels. The company said this means breakthrough efficacy by correcting dysfunctional neural excitation, thereby unlocking a broad range of diseases both within and beyond neurology.

The company’s technology platforms were first developed at University College London by Sania Therapeutics’ co-founders. The launch follows the closing of an oversubscribed series seed financing, proceeds of which have been applied to platform development, advancing a lead program in motor disorders, as well as initiating additional undisclosed programs which leverage platform capabilities.

“We formed Sania with a simple yet powerful vision: to be the first in developing medicines that treat disorders of neural circuits selectively. Today, we are excited to demonstrate proof-of-principle data and unveil our platforms,” said Andy Murray, CEO and co-founder of Sania Therapeutics.

Sania Therapeutics looks to human-centric delivery of tuneable genetic neuromodulation 

Sania Therapeutics unveiling its core patented technology platforms and proof-of-principle data at ASGCT. The platforms enable the precision delivery of proteins for neuromodulation to selected individual neural circuits. 

Human-centric precision delivery is enabled by Sania Therapeutics’ R-Scan platform, which leverages the combination of microfluidics with a diverse population of human induced pluripotent stem cells to recreate human neural circuits in a dish. This enables the directed evolution of human-centric AAVs. The proof-of-concept data being presented for R-Scan is generated in fully functional human motor neuron-muscle circuits. R-Scan is complemented by a second platform, Gre-Scan, a novel and proprietary technology for the high throughput screening of gene regulatory elements.

These platforms are combined with Neu-Scan, which facilitates tuneable genetic neuromodulation through the testing and validation of the overexpression of conditionally-activated ion channels. The presented proof-of-concept data demonstrate that the platform has identified ion channels, deliverable by AAV, that enable the treatment of dysfunctional neural excitation, the company said.