Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation a biotechnology company conducting human clinical trials of adeno-associated virus-based gene therapies for the treatment of rare eye diseases, and Synpromics Limited, a leading synthetic promoter development company backed by Calculus Capital, announced they have entered into a broad, multi-target collaboration agreement. Potential payments to be made by AGTC to Synpromics under the Agreement include a $1.5 million upfront payment, research funding for the collaboration, option exercise fees for each promoter and milestone payments based on clinical and commercial success followed by royalties on sales of products incorporating the covered promoters.
“AGTC is a leading gene therapy company with a robust pipeline and we are excited to announce this partnership, marking our third industry collaboration,” said David Venables, Ph.D., CEO of Synpromics. “Our proprietary synthetic promoter technology, combined with AGTC’s expertise in development and manufacturing, has significant potential to advance enhanced gene therapy product development across a broad range of therapeutic targets.”
As part of the collaboration, the companies plan to utilize Synpromics’ proprietary technology to develop and optimize synthetic promoters for multiple cell types that will be used in the development of new gene therapy candidates.
Sue Washer, President and CEO of AGTC, added, “We believe that Synpromics’ strong capabilities in the field of synthetic promoters can be leveraged to develop optimized gene therapies with improved flexibility and stronger expression at lower doses. Additionally we believe that Synpromics’ technology platform has the potential for broad applicability across our range of gene therapy products under development. We are enthusiastic about this mutually beneficial collaboration.”
AGTC is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that uses its proprietary gene therapy platform to develop products designed to transform the lives of patients with severe diseases in ophthalmology. AGTC’s lead product candidates focus on inherited orphan diseases of the eye, caused by mutations in single genes that significantly affect visual function and currently lack effective medical treatments.
Synpromics is a private company focused on developing its proprietary technology in the emerging field of synthetic biology by developing customized synthetic promoters. Synpromics technology gives biological researchers, product developers and manufacturers unprecedented control of gene expression through the ability to create a comprehensive portfolio of man-made DNA sequences.
