In honor of the late John Holaday, Ph.D., a luminary in the fields of science, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and community leadership, the ‘John Holaday’ BioHealth Leadership Award stands as a beacon recognizing those who embody his guiding principle — “do well by doing good.” Meet the 2023 finalists, nominated by YOU.
How Two Former IT Industry Professionals Found their Calling as Gene Therapy CEOs By Chris Frew | November 22, 2023 In most cases, the prerequisites for the CEO of a [….]
The Rockville-based company, an anticipated SPAC merger of American Gene Technologies HIV business and a 10x Capital Venture Acquisition Corp. III, will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HIV. The company will have a valuation of $500 million. Funds will be used to advance clinical development of Addimmune’s cell therapy for HIV.
What Startups Say About the Maryland Biotech Investment Tax Credit and Why You Should Care
5 Questions With Natalie Ferguson, Artist and Creative Marketing Specialist, American Gene Technologies International, Inc. 1. What did you want to be when you grow up? How’d you get from [….]
Why the First Clinical Cure for HIV Will Likely be Developed in Maryland By Chris Frew | September 18, 2023 As was true in the 1980s, Maryland’s DNA Valley remains [….]
Jeff Galvin, the CEO of American Gene TechnologiesⓇ, one of the leading biotech companies in Maryland, has championed the state as “DNA Valley.” And Galvin should know: he came to Maryland after a successful career in Silicon Valley and sees parallels between the early days of an emerging Silicon Valley and what’s going on today in DNA Valley, which currently stretches from Montgomery County and Frederick, Maryland all the way up to Baltimore.
After achieving several important clinical milestones, momentum and excitement has been building for months around the company’s lead pipeline candidate AGT103-T, which is a potential HIV functional cure. In the coming months, the company expects to have the latest data readout for its Phase I trial. AGT103-T is a single-dose HIV gene therapy that could potentially replace antiretroviral therapy (ART) with a functional cure.
Today, a host of life sciences companies are utilizing gene therapy as a tool to find a cure for HIV. When discussing an HIV cure, there are two different possible targets: a “functional cure” where HIV is not eradicated but rather totally controlled without further ART treatment and a “sterilizing cure” that eliminates HIV completely from the body.
American Gene Technologies (AGT) announced today that the Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) voted unanimously to continue AGT’s HIV cure program without modification, after safety analysis of the participant’s data revealed no adverse effects from the treatment. AGT’s Phase 1 trial of AGT103-T, a new cell and gene therapy for HIV disease, is designed to induce durable viral suppression by delivering therapeutic genes to the recipient’s immune cells. The cells are collected by leukapheresis, modified outside the body, then re-infused. Once infused, the cells are expected to durably suppress the virus at undetectable levels without the need for antiretroviral treatment.
