
Amarna raises €10M to push gene therapy platform into clinic; Editas Medicine, AskBio join forces
→ Amarna Therapeutics — developing an SV40-based gene delivery vector platform called SVac — has raised €10 million. The round was led by Swedish investment company Flerie Invest AB, along with contributions from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency and existing shareholder Pim Berger. The funds will be used to develop SVac and steer it into a first-in-man clinical study, expected to commence in the coming years.
→ Editas Medicine — who recently welcomed a new CEO, Cynthia Collins — and AskBio are partnering up in a strategic research collaboration to explore in vivo delivery of genome editing medicines to treat neurological diseases. The partnership will bring together AskBio’s capsid development, clinical-stage AAV vector delivery system with Editas’ genome editing technologies.
→ CRISPR Therapeutics and KSQ Therapeutics have inked a license agreement in which CRISPR will gain access to KSQ’s intellectual property (IP) for editing certain gene targets in its allogeneic oncology cell therapy programs, and KSQ will gain access to CRISPR’s IP for editing gene targets identified by KSQ as part of its current and future eTILTM (engineered tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte) cell programs. Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.