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Funded Grants

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Human MiniPromoters for Restricted Expression of Ocular Gene Therapy

Project Overview

The purpose of this project is to develop promoters. Promoters are pieces of DNA, which act as switches to turn genes on and off. Such promoters are important tools for drug companies working on developing gene-based therapies; known as gene therapies. These are a type of biological therapy, somewhat like a vaccine, rather than a drug. Because such therapies are gene-based, they need promoters to turn them on and off; we argue, the better the switch, the safer and more effective the therapy. Blindness represents an enormous unmet disease burden in terms of human suffering and economic cost. Luckily, diseases of the eye are excellent targets for drug companies to develop gene therapies, and many companies are currently conducting clinical trials for such therapies in the United States. Thus, for this project, the promoters we are developing are all designed to control genes of the eye, and for therapies to treat blindness. For this project, the team is developing 30 new promoters for different cell-types in the eye, and thus useful for different diseases of the eye and different therapies for the eye. A major challenge is that normal genes have very large promoters, but for therapies the promoters need to be very small.

 

Principal Investigator

Elizabeth Simpson , University of British Columbia

Team Members

Adriana Di Polo, CHUM Research Centre, University of Montréal

Partners and Donors

CQDM

Ontario Brain Institute

Project Ongoing

Human MiniPromoters for Restricted Expression of Ocular Gene Therapy

  • Program Type

    Platform grants

  • Area of research

    Neurotechnology

  • Disease Area

    Other

  • Competition

    CQDM - Brain Canada - Focus on Brain

  • Province

    British Columbia

  • Start Date

    2015

  • Total Grant Amount

    $1,496,062

Contact Us

1200 McGill College Avenue
Suite 1600, Montreal, Quebec
H3B 4G7

+1 (514) 989-2989 info@braincanada.ca

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