Neuroscientists at Lund University in Sweden have developed a new technology that engineers the shell of a virus to deliver gene therapy to the exact cell type in the body that needs to be treated.
With the new method, researchers have been able to significantly reduce the need for laboratory animals, as millions of variants of the same drug are studied in the same individual. They have also been able to move important parts of the study from animals to cell culture of human stem cells.
“We believe that the new synthetic virus we succeeded in creating would be very well suited for gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, for example, and we have high hopes that these virus vectors will be able to be put into clinical use. Together with researchers at Harvard University, we have established a new biotechnology company in Boston, Dyno Therapeutics, to further develop the virus engineering technology, using artificial intelligence, for future treatments,” concludes Tomas Björklund.