Biotech comes to its 'antisenses' after hard-won drug approval

Nature

Biotech comes to its 'antisenses' after hard-won drug approval"


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“With any brand new technology, you never know when the world will be ready for it.” So said Paul Boni, an analyst at Punk, Ziegel & Knoll, in 1998 (as quoted by the New York Times), after


the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its first gene-silencing 'antisense therapy', a drug known as Vitravene (fomivirsen), for the treatment of cytomegalovirus infections in


individuals with weakened immune systems.


The arrival of Vitravene, a short strand of 21 DNA molecular units that blocks viral replication, was hailed as a major milestone for the biotech industry and was widely anticipated to usher


in a new era of antisense products. But no more came. And by the middle of the last decade, Isis Pharmaceuticals, the Carlsbad, California–based company behind Vitravene, ended up pulling


the therapy from the market because improvements in other antiretrovirals had effectively eliminated the drug's target market. Boni's cautionary words proved all too prescient.


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