Both Summit Therapeutics plc and Insmed Inc. have taken wiping out bacteria to the next level, releasing separate clinical trial data last week that show their drugs target specific bacteria and reach hard-to-treat places in the lung that bacteria hide, respectively. Read More
The promise has always been there for gene therapies. Unfortunately, the field has seen a number of false starts for the expected explosion of investment and business development around treatments that correct for faulty genes. The breakthrough appeared to have been made following the European approval of Glybera (alipogene tiparvovec, Uniqure BV), for the treatment of the ultra-orphan metabolic disease lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPL). But, while the medicine was widely heralded as the "first gene therapy" in the Western world, it failed to take off and its developer subsequently abandoned plans to have it approved in the U.S. Read More
