Boost for Oxford biopharmaceutical spin-out
25 Dec 2015 by Evoluted New Media
Nightstar – a biopharmaceutical company spun out from the University of Oxford specialising in developing gene therapies for inherited retinal dystrophies – has announced that it has completed a £23.2 million funding round.
Nightstar – a biopharmaceutical company spun out from the University of Oxford specialising in developing gene therapies for inherited retinal dystrophies – has announced that it has completed a £23.2 million funding round.
The funding – provided by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Syncona – will enable the Oxford spin-out to continue clinical development of its gene therapy for choroideremia and advances of multiple retinal gene therapy programs into human trials.
CEO of Nightstar, David Fellows, said: “We are delighted to welcome a high quality investor such as NEA who supports our goal to build Nightstar into a leading commercial retinal gene therapy enterprise. Our mission is to restore or maintain sight in patients suffering from a range of untreatable blinding diseases and the participation of both NEA and Syncona is essential to realising that mission.”
The lead programme of the biopharmaceutical company is gene therapy for an inherited form of progressive blindness – choroideremia – developed by Professor Robert MacLaren at Oxford’s Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology. This approach uses a genetically modified virus to deliver an unmutated copy of the relevant gene into the retinal cells of choroideremia patients.
“Gene therapy has huge potential as a treatment for many patients who are suffering from retinitis pigmentosa and other genetic forms of blindness. We have established an internationally renowned team around the choroideremia programme and I am delighted that this additional funding will allow us to develop our other retinal gene therapy projects into real treatments for patients,” said Professor Robert MacLaren at the University of Oxford.
