Gene Therapy Catapult, CombiGene in Gene Therapy Mfg Pact
Cell and Gene Therapy (CGT) Catapult, a center of excellence funded by Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency, to support cell- therapy organizations, and CombiGene, a Lund, Sweden-headquartered biopharmaceutical company developing treatments for epilepsy, have agreed to partner on a project to develop manufacturing processes for CombiGene’s CG01, an investigational gene therapy for treating epilepsy.
The collaboration aims to develop a complete and final manufacturing process, which is expected to allow CombiGene to progress to commercial GMP production and thereafter clinical trials.
CombiGene’s platform is designed to use gene-therapy vectors to deliver a combination of neuropeptide y (NPY) and NPY receptors into brain cells, which has shown to inhibit epileptic seizures in a series of preclinical studies, according to CombiGene.
In 2017, CombiGene finalized two studies. The company says initial data from the preclinical proof-of-concept-study, show that CombiGene’s CG01 reduces the frequency of epileptic seizures in animals. Final data from the study is planned to be presented during the first quarter of 2018.
In the second human expression study, initial data show that the therapeutic genes encoded by CG01 are expressed in epileptic human tissue, thereby confirming that the method of administering genes encoded by the candidate is successful in human tissue, according to CombiGene.
Source: CombiGene