IZB Biotech News

Our last issue’s headline about SIRION Biotech was labeled “to Paris and Boston”, as we reported on the company’s new branches in two of the Western World’s biggest gene therapy hotspots. Now SIRION Biotech has announced new global development and licensing partnerships with two major gene-therapy players, Orchard Therapeutics in London and Denali Therapeutics in San Francisco.
Orchard Therapeutics developed Strim­velis, the first therapy for ADA-SCID, formerly known as ‘bubble-boy disease’, that was approved in Europe. Denali Therapeutics was founded in 2015 by several former Genentech executives with a focus on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS. It gained prominence by accomplishing the largest first venture capital round ever, amounting to 217 million dollar.
For Orchard, SIRION is helping to improve lentiviral transduction. For Denali, SIRION is developing novel AAV vectors to bridge the blood-brain barrier and target the central-nervous system. Both topics address current technological bottlenecks at the forefront of modern therapy developments.