uniQure AMT-130 Poised to Become First AAV Gene Therapy to Enter the Clinic for Huntington’s Disease
Today's press release from uniQure sounds very hopeful and gives us even more reason to believe we are not forgotten by any means. The press release reads as follows:
uniQure N.V. (NASDAQ: QURE), a leading gene therapy company advancing transformative therapies for patients with severe medical needs, today announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has completed its review of the Company’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for AMT-130, and the IND is now effective allowing uniQure to begin its planned Phase I/II study. AMT-130 comprises a recombinant AAV5 vector carrying a DNA cassette encoding a microRNA that non-selectively lowers or knocks-down human huntingtin protein in Huntington’s disease patients.
“The FDA’s clearance of our IND for AMT-130 is a significant milestone for Huntington’s disease patients and an important event in the field of gene therapy,” said Matt Kapusta, chief executive officer at uniQure. “We expect that AMT-130 will be the first one-time administered AAV gene therapy to enter clinical testing for the treatment of Huntington’s disease, a devastating neurodegenerative disorder for which there is no approved disease-modifying treatment.
“AMT-130 also represents the first clinical-stage AAV-based therapy specifically designed to silence an abnormal gene in the brain with a single administration, and we believe our proprietary miQURE™ gene silencing platform has the potential to be applied to many other diseases, such as spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3),” continued Mr. Kapusta. “This achievement is a major milestone for uniQure’s research organization, who have dedicated years of effort with the hope we can one day offer treatment for the many patients waiting generations for an effective therapy.”
FDA clearance of the IND enables uniQure to initiate its planned dose-escalating, randomized and controlled Phase I/II clinical trial to assess the safety, tolerability and efficacy of a one-time treatment of AMT-130 in patients with Huntington’s disease. uniQure expects to open several clinical sites in the United States and begin dosing patients in the second half of this year.
About Huntington’s Disease Huntington’s disease is a rare, inherited neurodegenerative disorder that leads to loss of muscle coordination, behavioral abnormalities and cognitive decline, resulting in complete physical and mental deterioration. The disease is caused by an autosomal dominant mutation, CAG repeat expansion in the first exon of the huntingtin gene, that leads to the production of a mutated protein that aggregates in the brain. Despite the clear etiology of HD, there are no therapies available to treat the disease, delay onset, or slow progression of a patient's decline.
About uniQure uniQure is delivering on the promise of gene therapy – single treatments with potentially curative results. We are leveraging our modular and validated technology platform to rapidly advance a pipeline of proprietary and partnered gene therapies to treat patients with hemophilia, Huntington’s disease and other severe genetic diseases.