Michael Ehlers. Limelight Bio

Michael Ehlers teas­es plan to build the next 'sig­na­ture' ge­net­ic med­i­cine com­pa­ny with $75M from Ap­ple Tree Part­ners

When Michael Ehlers jumped ship at Bio­gen to be­come a ven­ture part­ner and CSO at Ap­ple Tree, he al­so got a new job as CEO of a gene ther­a­py start­up named Lime­light Bio. The stealthy biotech is now ready to shed some — though not much — of its veils.

As ATP man­ag­ing part­ner Seth Har­ri­son tells it, the new ven­ture grew out of a strong re­la­tion­ship with the co-founders, Jean Ben­nett and Phil John­son. Ben­nett, who steered the ear­ly re­search on the land­mark gene ther­a­py even­tu­al­ly known as Lux­tur­na along­side Spark Ther­a­peu­tics CSO Kathy High, now leads Penn’s Cen­ter for Ad­vanced Reti­nal and Oc­u­lar Ther­a­pies. Mean­while, John­son left his role at the Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal of Philadel­phia to be­come Lime­light’s CSO.

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