This biotech’s ‘Microsoft’ approach could change how we see gene therapy
The company’s using a unique component-based platform to develop functional cures for diseases, including HIV.
Published March 20, 2023
Karissa Waddick
EditorStock via Getty Images
Welcome to Biotech Spotlight, a series featuring companies that are creating breakthrough technologies and products. Today, we’re looking at American Gene Technologies and its “software development” approach to developing gene therapies.In focus with: Jeff Galvin, CEO, American Gene Technologies (AGT)
Jeff Galvin, CEO, American Gene Technologies
Permission granted by American Gene Technologies
AGT’s vision: After a brief retirement from the tech sector in the early 2000s, Galvin founded AGT with the goal of harnessing genetic medicine to develop a one-dose functional cure for HIV and other diseases. He also sees the company filling a niche in the gene and cell therapy world as a sort of “software developer” with a platform of reusable components from which its therapies are developed.“Nobody’s really focused on the middleware (in cell and gene therapy development),” he said. “My whole concept was gene and cell therapy is so broad, and it’s so much like the software industry, that the most important thing to do is develop these middleware components that you can mix and match to create efficiencies and that you can later leverage when the market is ready, when pharmas are ready (and) when the FDA is ready.”
Its strategy: Over the last 15 years of developing its HIV therapy, the company has patented 25 processes — from how it isolates certain T cells to its lentivirus viral vectors — that Galvin believes could be “valuable building blocks that will eventually be in 1000s of drugs” either developed by AGT or at other companies licensing AGT’s technology. That side of the business is still growing, he said, noting that AGT has mainly “been approached by “really small companies without any money” for such deals.
Many biotech companies are built on similar types of platform technologies, but Galvin argued that AGT’s component-focused approach is different. Other companies typically “do one thing,” he said, whereas AGT’s platform approach includes smaller components that build into an entire proprietary operating system, like Apple’s patented iOS.
Read the full article at: www.pharmavoice.com
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