Elan's gene delivery play

Although gene therapy is conventionally viewed as separate from conventional pharmaceutical drug delivery, Elan Corp. plc and Targeted Genetics Corp. hope that a combination of gene delivery vectors and drug delivery technology will improve targeting of gene therapies to specific tissues.

The partners will form a new company, Emerald Gene Systems, which will be 80.1 percent owned by TGEN (Seattle, Wash.) and 19.9 percent owned by ELN (see B3). Emerald will develop new technologies for systemic delivery of genes with specific tissue targeting capabilities. ...