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

Access through your institution Buy or subscribe “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. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution RELEVANT

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approval. _Nat Med_ 19, 252 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0313-252 Download citation * Published: 06 March 2013 * Issue Date: March 2013 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0313-252 SHARE

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