George Church (Mary Altaffer/AP Images)

George Church and an en­tre­pre­neur­ial post­doc join the hunt for AAV 2.0 with a new vec­tor-cloak­ing tech­nol­o­gy

About five years ago, George Church and his new post­doc, Ying Kai Chan, sat hunched over a lap­top in the ge­net­ics pi­o­neer’s Har­vard of­fice and stared in be­wil­der­ment at an old pa­per.

The pa­per doc­u­ment­ed ear­ly tri­als for Gly­bera, the first and at the time on­ly gene ther­a­py ap­proved any­where on the plan­et. Less than three dozen pa­tients ever re­ceived it, but in the years be­fore Lux­tur­na and Zol­gens­ma, it gave re­searchers an ex­am­ple they could point to for gene ther­a­py ac­tu­al­ly work­ing.

Endpoints News

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.