NightstaRx plans to develop and sell therapies for retinal dystrophies - degenerative conditions affecting vision - by building on work carried out at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, it said on Thursday. Oxford-based researchers reported two weeks ago that an early-stage clinical trial using gene therapy had shown promise in a handful of patients with a progressive form of blindness called choroideremia. The company has an exclusive license to the intellectual property underpinning the Oxford gene therapy programme. Choroideremia is caused by a mutation in a gene that makes a protein called REP1. It affects an estimated one in 50,000 people and causes sufferers, who are mainly men, to lose their sight gradually as the cells in the retina degenerate. ($1 = 0.6041 British pounds)
New British biotech firm to tap gene therapy for blindness.