What uni­fies Hunt­ing­ton's, spin­ocere­bel­lar atax­ia and my­oton­ic dy­s­tro­phy? Ness Berming­ham's new start­up looks to drug that

Ness Berming­ham’s lat­est ven­ture brings throw­backs to some of his ear­li­est work in bio­phar­ma. Part of his PhD work at Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don re­volved around triplet re­peat dis­or­ders, a group of 40 or so ge­net­ic dis­eases char­ac­ter­ized by the rep­e­ti­tion and ex­pan­sion of spe­cif­ic trin­u­cleotide se­quences. Dur­ing his ear­ly years at At­las Ven­ture — way be­fore he be­came known as a co-founder of pi­o­neer­ing CRISPR play­er In­tel­lia — he helped cre­ate a biotech, Prest­wick Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, that cre­at­ed a Hunt­ing­ton’s drug dubbed tetra­benazine.

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