BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Ariad: Triggering gene therapy

February 7, 2000 8:00 AM UTC

Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. has developed a ligand-dependent protein secretion technology that could enable gene therapies to have a much more precisely controlled and predictable onset of action.

Researchers at ARIA's Ariad Gene Therapeutics subsidiary and colleagues published, in Science, the development of Regulated Accumulation of Proteins for Immediate Delivery (RAPID). The technology allows the secretion of an engineered protein to be regulated by adding a conditional aggregation domain (CAD) to the gene encoding the protein. The CAD causes a given protein to aggregate inside the cell's endoplasmic reticulum and prevents it from being secreted...