ViGeneron GmbH, a next-generation gene therapy company, has announced a follow-on collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo Company to utilize ViGeneron’s novel engineered recombinant adeno-associated virus vectors (vgAAVs) to address an undisclosed target for the treatment of prevalent eye diseases. Financial terms are not disclosed.

ViGeneron has worked on this program together with Daiichi Sankyo since early 2021.This follow-on collaboration allows the companies to create and validate vgAAV-based therapeutic candidates for the undisclosed target through in-vivo animal studies.

Through a unique and stringent in vivo selection procedure, where an AAV2-based peptide-display library was intravenously administered in mouse models followed by isolation of vector DNA from target cells after only 24 hours, ViGeneron’s two novel vgAAV vectors termed vgAAV.GL and vgAAV.NN were identified and characterized. These novel vgAAV vectors mediate a widespread and high-level retinal transduction after intravitreal injection in a wide range of preclinical models and efficiently transduce photoreceptors in human retinal explant cultures.