NIGHTSTAR THERAPEUTICS COMPLETES SALE TO BIOGEN…

The sale of Oxford University spin-out company Nightstar Therapeutics has been completed.

The clinical-stage gene therapy company, which was co-founded in 2013 by Professor of Ophthalmology, Robert MacLaren. is developing treatments for inherited retinal diseases that lead to progressive blindness.

The company’s pipeline of therapies focuses on rare eye diseases with no currently approved treatments.

Following Nightstar’s initial public offering on the USA’s biotech-friendly

NASDAQ stock exchange market in September 2017, it grew to a market capitalisation of 500 million dollars.

Earlier this year the company was bought by US biotech company Biogen for around 800 million dollars from Syncona, a leading UK life sciences fund.

Nightstar’s lead asset is NSR-REP1 for the treatment of choroideremia, a rare, degenerative, X-linked inherited retinal disorder, which leads to blindness and has no approved treatments. Initially, patients with this disease experience poor night vision, and over time progressive visual loss ultimately leading to complete blindness.

…While Oxford Biomedica collaborates with Japanese company Santen on inherited retinal disease

Oxford Biomedica, the leading gene and cell therapy group, is collaborating with Santen Pharmaceutical, the market leader for prescription ophthalmic pharmaceuticals in Japan. It plans to research and develop gene therapy products for the treatment of inherited retinal disease. Inherited retinal diseases are a group of rare disorders caused by one of more than 260 different genes, where mutation results in vision loss or blindness, often disproportionally affecting children and young adults.

John Dawson, Chief Executive Officer of Oxford Biomedica, said: “We are delighted to have formed our first collaboration in Japan. We believe that our LentiVector® platform is particularly well-suited to the delivery of large genes to the eye.”

Novartis’ five-year Big Data collaboration with University of Oxford

Leading global medicine company Novartis is working on a five-year collaboration with the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute (BDI) to establish a research alliance that will improve drug development by making it more efficient and more targeted.

Using artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, the partners expect to transform how ultra large and multiple datasets are analysed, combined and interpreted to identify early predictors of patient responses to treatments for inflammatory diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and psoriasis.

The alliance will make use of anonymised data from approximately five million patients from the UK and international partner organisations, together with anonymised data captured from relevant Novartis clinical trials.

Combining the BDI’s machine learning technology and experience in data analysis with Novartis’ clinical expertise and trial data, the alliance expects to predict how patients will respond to existing and new medicines.