Selecta Biosciences and Généthon are collaborating to enable repeat dosing for gene therapies. The companies are combining Généthon’s expertise in the development of gene therapy vectors and Selecta’s Synthetic Vaccine Particle platform to prevent undesired immune responses.
Selecta seems quite fond of collaborating with French companies. After allying with Sanofi, the US-based company has announced an ongoing research collaboration with Généthon.
The partnership aims to enable, for the first time, the use of repeated systemic doses of gene therapy vector. Généthon will apply Selecta’s Synthetic Vaccine Particle platform in an effort to eliminate the neutralizing antibodies and other undesired immune responses to the viral vector used in gene therapy.
Généthon and Selecta will initially focus their collaborative research efforts on gene therapies in development for muscular dystrophies and pediatric liver metabolic diseases that employ adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors. AAV vectors are a gene transfer platform of choice for many in vivo therapy applications.
Over recent years, the field of in vivo gene transfer with these vectors has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of clinical testing. This includes promising results obtained in clinical trials of gene therapy for hemophilia B, Leber’s congenital amaurosis, and others, along with the market approval of an AAV gene therapy drug for the treatment of lipoprotein lipase deficiency in Europe. As a confirmation of this momentum, GSK just filled an AAV gene therapy approval in Europe, starting the race of Big Pharma companies into this field.