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ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

Ministring theory in practice

How Mediphage’s ministrings improve upon plasmids for gene therapy

July 18, 2018 8:26 PM UTC

Mediphage Bioceuticals Inc.’s ministrings have safety, manufacturing and other advantages that could give conventional plasmids and related vectors a run for their money in the gene therapy space.

The newco’s ministrings are linear DNAs with covalently closed ends. Like conventional plasmids, they can deliver 15-20kb of DNA -- up to five times the payload of viral vectors -- and are easily manufactured in bacteria. But ministrings lack prokaryotic sequences that silence therapeutic cargo, so they express the therapeutic gene longer and require less frequent dosing, said founder and CSO Roderick Slavcev, an associate professor of pharmacy at the University of Waterloo who invented the technology...