BioCentury
ARTICLE | Finance

Spark's plug

Spark receives $50M to bring ophthalmic gene therapy to market

November 4, 2013 8:00 AM UTC

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is looking to monetize its gene therapy assets and launched Spark Therapeutics LLC with a $50 million capital commitment and rights to develop and commercialize adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector-based therapies.

Spark has two clinical-stage programs. One is an AAV vector encoding the retinal pigment epithelium-specific protein 65kDa (RPE65) gene, which is in a Phase III trial to treat inherited blindness caused by RPE65 mutations...