Allergan Dips Toes into Gene Therapy With $60M Retrosense Buy : xconomy

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Allergan Dips Toes into Gene Therapy With $60M Retrosense Buy

Allergan Dips Toes into Gene Therapy With $60M Retrosense Buy

Allergan Dips Toes into Gene Therapy With $60M Retrosense BuyXconomy Detroit/Ann Arbor —The attempt to commercialize gene therapy has been a multi-decade roller coaster, but its current upswing continues.Today Allergan, a company best known for skin and eye care products, has acquired a startup developing gene therapies for a range of eye diseases.The deal is pocket change for a company that brought in over $4 billion in revenue in 2015, but Allergan (NYSE: AGN) paying $60 million up front for privately held Ann Arbor, MI, startup RetroSense Therapeutics signals another large company's comfort with gene therapy—a technique that could offer long-lasting treatments for genetic diseases, if not outright cures.


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Allergan Acquires Gene Therapy Company RetroSense Therapeutics Adding First-In-Class Technology to

Allergan Acquires Gene Therapy Company RetroSense Therapeutics Adding First-In-Class Technology to

"The acquisition of RetroSense and its RST-001 program builds on Allergan's deep commitment to eye care, and our focus on investing in game-changing innovation for retinal conditions, including Retinitis Pigmentosa, where patients desperately need treatment options," said Brent Saunders, CEO and President of Allergan.Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is a group of rare, inherited genetic disorders characterized by progressive peripheral vision loss and night vision difficulties followed by eventual central vision loss and blindness in many cases.Approximately 100,000 people living in the USi and 14 to 33 per 100,000 people worldwide have the disorder.iiRST-001 is first-in-class gene therapy application of optogenetics, a therapeutic approach that confers light sensitivity to cells that were not previously, or natively, light sensitive.


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Gene Therapy for Sickle Cell Aces Vital Preclinical Test

Gene Therapy for Sickle Cell Aces Vital Preclinical Test

Click Image To Enlarge + Researchers recently reports on a precision-engineered gene therapy virus, markedly reduced sickle-induced red-cell damage in mice with sickle cell disease.[NIH]Sickle-cell disease falls into an intriguing scientific paradigm—it is very well studied from multiple scientific angles and most of the molecular mechanisms associated with the disease have been elucidated.However, treatments for the disease have been lacking, as there are very few ways to combat the genetic disorder, without rectifying the DNA mutation that causes the sickle-cell trait.