Sania Therapeutics, a new company focused on developing genetic medicines for neural circuit dysfunction, has launched at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) conference.
The company’s approach combines adeno-associated viruses (AAV) in human neural circuits with tuneable conditionally-activated ion channels. This corrects dysfunctional neural excitation.
Sania’s technology platforms were first developed at University College London (UCL) by the company’s co-founders. The launch follows the closing of an oversubscribed Series Seed financing, proceeds of which have been applied to platform development, advancing a lead programme in motor disorders.
The co-founders are Andy Murray, CEO, former Group Leader of Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour (SWC), UCL, Professor Robert Brownstone, Chair of Neurosurgery at UCL, and Dr Raj S Dattani, Senior Drug Development Clinician at Weatherden.
“We formed Sania with a simple yet powerful vision: to be the first in developing medicines that treat disorders of neural circuits selectively. Today we are excited to demonstrate proof-of-principle data and unveil our platforms,” said Andy Murray.
Sania’s R-Scan platform uses the combination of microfluidics with human induced pluripotent stem cells to recreate human neural circuits in a dish, enabling the directed evolution of human-centric AAVs. A second platform, Gre-Scan, is designed for the high throughput screening of gene regulatory elements.
Neu-Scan facilitates tuneable genetic neuromodulation through the testing and validation of the overexpression of conditionally-activated ion channels.
