Neurophth Therapeutics, Inc., (“Neurophth”) and Suzhou Abogen Biosciences Co., Ltd. (“Abogen”) today announced a strategic partnership aiming to provide mRNA-based therapeutics for the treatment of retinal diseases. The partnership combines Neurophth’s experience in global gene therapy drugs development and understanding of ophthalmic diseases with Abogen’s proprietary technology platforms in mRNA design, in vitro synthesis, and LNP-based delivery systems to generate new ocular treatments.
About Neurophth
Neurophth is
China’s leading in-vivo gene therapy company for ophthalmic diseases. With
subsidiaries in China (Wuhan, Shanghai, and Suzhou) and US (San Diego,
California), Neurophth, a fully integrated company, is striving to discover and
develop genomic medicines for patients suffering from genetic diseases
globally. Our validated AAV platform, which has been published in Nature -
Scientific Reports, Ophthalmology, and EBioMedicine, has
successfully delivered proof-of-concept investigator-initiated trials data of
186 subjects with investigational gene therapies in the retina. Our most
advanced investigational gene therapy drug candidate, NR082 (rAAV2-ND4),
in development for the treatment of mtND4-mediated LHON, has been
granted orphan drug designation (ODD) by the U.S. FDA, an integrated Phase
1/2/3 clinical trial has been initiated with the first patient dosed in June
2021 after the IND clearance by the China NMPA in March 2021, and US IND has
recently been cleared by US FDA. The pipeline also includes mtND1-mediated
LHON (the Company’s 2nd US ODD), autosomal dominant optic atrophy, optic
neuroprotection, vascular retinopathy, and five other preclinical candidates.
Neurophth has scaled up in-house manufacturing capability in Suzhou facility
utilizing single-use technologies to support future commercial demand. To learn
more about us and our growing pipeline, visit www.neurophth.com.
About Abogen
Suzhou Abogen Biosciences is a clinical-stage
biotechnology company advancing mRNA-based therapeutics for the treatment of
cancer and infectious diseases. Since establishment in early 2019, Abogen has
developed its own mRNA technology platform and proprietary delivery system
which empowers the development of a series of drug product candidates including
vaccines for infectious diseases and therapies for cancer. In June 2020,
Abogen’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine has become the first mRNA vaccine approved
for clinical trials in China. To date, ARCoV has completed the phase I and
phase II clinical studies and is under evaluation of phase III clinical trials.
Abogen obtained manufacturing license for COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in Nov 2021.