First In Vivo Base Editing Therapy

Calendar July 14, 2022 | Posted by admin

Verve Therapeutics has dosed its first patient with what it said today was the first in vivo base editing therapy to reach the clinic, a potential treatment for Heterozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia (HeFH). Base editing is a genome-editing method related to the CRISPR–Cas9 system.

Verve, which specializes in gene editing therapies for cardiovascular disease, said that its VERVE-101 is a single-course gene editing treatment designed to reduce the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) that drives HeFH. VERVE-101 consists of an adenine base editor messenger RNA that Verve has licensed from another base editing therapy developer, Beam Therapeutics, as well as an optimized guide RNA targeting the PCSK9 gene packaged in an engineered lipid nanoparticle.

By making a single A-to-G change in the DNA genetic sequence of PCSK9, VERVE-101 aims to inactivate that target gene. Verve reasons that inactivation of the PCSK9 gene has previously been shown to up-regulate LDLR expression, leading to lower LDL-C levels and thus reducing the risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD)—of which HeFH is a subtype. Base editing is a pinpoint method for engineering base substitutions without cleaving the DNA double helix backbone. The underlying technology was developed in the lab of Harvard University chemist David Liu, PhD—who co-founded Beam with Feng Zhang, PhD, and Keith Joung, MD—with research led by two postdocs, Alexis Komor, PhD, and Nicole Gaudelli, PhD.
Beam is also expected to enroll its first patient later this year in its first clinical trial for one of its base editing therapies, BEAM-101 for the treatment of sickle cell disease (SCD). Beam also plans two IND applications this year—one for its second SCD candidate BEAM-102, and the other for BEAM-201, a treatment for relapsed/refractory T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia/T cell lymphoblastic lymphoma.

“The dosing of the first human with such an investigational base editing medicine represents a significant achievement by our team and for the field of gene editing,” Sekar Kathiresan, MD, Verve’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “Preclinical data suggest that VERVE-101 has the potential to offer people with HeFH a game-changing treatment option, transforming the traditional chronic care model to a single-course, life-long treatment solution,” Kathiresan added.

Andrew Bellinger, MD, PhD, Verve’s chief scientific and medical officer, added that VERVE-101 is intended to improve upon current standard of care treatment for HeFH. He stated that less than 20% of patients achieve LDL-C goal levels due to the limitations of the chronic model, which include requirements for rigorous patient adherence, regular health care access, and extensive health care infrastructure.

Source: https://www.vervetx.com/
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https://www.genengnews.com/

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Base Editing Could Cure a Host of Genetic Diseases

Calendar January 19, 2021 | Posted by admin

Picture the familiar double helix of human DNA — a long, twisted ladder with 3 billion rungs on it, each made of a pair of genetic bases (A, T, C, and G). A mistake in just one base along that ladder — an A where there should be a G — can be enough to cause a disease. In fact, researchers have linked over 31,000 different mistakes, known as “point mutations,” to human diseases. Now, an advanced form of gene therapy — called base editing — could make it possible to safely correct them.

Base editing is a type of gene editing technology, just like CRISPR. However, while CRISPR cuts through both strands of the DNA ladder to swap in different genes, a base editor makes precise changes to individual letters along the genome — a much less invasive kind of DNA surgery.

“It’s like your spell-checker,” neuroscientist Jeffrey Holt said. “If you type the wrong letter, spell checker fixes it for you.” Base editing was first developed by Broad Institute researcher David Liu in 2016, and it’s not perfect — the best base editors still make off-target edits and aren’t 100%  efficient. However, the technique is more efficient than CRISPR and causes fewer errors, which has made it the focus of considerable research into correcting disease-causing point mutations.

“Base editing is like your spell-checker. If you type the wrong letter, it fixes it for you,” explained Jeffrey Holt. Holt was part of a team that used base editing to partially restore the hearing of mice with a point mutation that causes deafness in people. Earlier in 2020, University of Illinois researchers used base editing to slow the progression of ALS in mice. More recently, Liu was part of a group that used base editing to correct the point mutation that causes progeria, a premature-aging syndrome, in mice. By changing a T to a C in a single gene, they were able to more than double the lifespan of mice with the disease.

There’s no guarantee that a therapy that works in mice will translate to humans (although gene editing is conceptually much simpler than drugs that rely on complex chemistry). To find out whether base editing can live up to its promise as a disease-curing technology, we need human studies — and now, one is just on the horizon.

On January 12, Massachusetts-based biotech company Verve Therapeutics announced the promising results of a study testing a base editing treatment for heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH), a genetic heart disease. HeFH is fairly common, affecting about one in 500 people, and it causes consistently high levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL-C) — that makes people with the disease susceptible to heart attacks or strokes at a relatively young age. In primates with HeFH, Verve used base editing to change an A to a G in a single gene. Within two weeks, the animals’ blood LDL-C levels had dropped by 59%. Six months later, they were still just as low.The treatment, dubbed “VERVE-101,” was well-tolerated, with no adverse effects reported.

“When we started, we had no idea this would work,” Verve CEO Sekar Kathiresan said in a press release, adding, “It works, and we expect this to be durable for the lifetime of the animals.” Now, Verve wants to find out if VERVE-101 works in humans.

Source: https://www.freethink.com/

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