Pre­ci­sion ther­a­py ap­proach se­cures small biotech $42M haul to com­bat dis­ease that in­spired the Ice Buck­et Chal­lenge

Akin to cys­tic fi­bro­sis (CF), sci­en­tists un­der­stand that cer­tain mu­ta­tions con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of the fa­tal neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis (ALS). And much like CF drug­mak­er Ver­tex, a small Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts-based biotech is forg­ing a path to en­gi­neer­ing pre­ci­sion ther­a­pies to treat the dis­ease that killed vi­sion­ary physi­cist Stephen Hawk­ing.

The com­pa­ny, chris­tened QurAlis, now has $42 mil­lion in its cof­fers with three pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams and 5 em­ploy­ees (in­clud­ing se­nior man­age­ment) to com­bat an ill­ness that has long flum­moxed re­searchers, re­sult­ing in a cou­ple of ap­proved ther­a­pies over the course of decades, nei­ther of which at­tacks the un­der­ly­ing cause of the rare pro­gres­sive con­di­tion that at­tacks nerve cells lo­cat­ed in the brain and spinal cord re­spon­si­ble for con­trol­ling vol­un­tary mus­cles.

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