AskBio receives funding to tackle gene therapy manufacturing challenges

Gene therapy company AskBio has received a £1.99 million R&D grant from Scottish Enterprise to fund research into manufacturing challenges associated with gene therapies.

The company will use the funding to explore the manufacturing challenges related to scaling gene therapies for widespread patient access. AskBio also aims to further develop technologies that can improve the safety and efficacy of current therapies, and to enable the treatment of genetic diseases with more complicated disease pathways that the industry is not yet able to address.

Currently, the high costs of adeno-associated virus (AAV) manufacturing and its complexity limits the availability and access to treatments. Whilst gene therapies offer a lot of promise into hard-to-treat disease areas, the treatments also come with the problem of supplying them on a global scale.

The grant awarded to AskBio will help the company create 11 jobs in Edinburgh and will also enable the team to enhance its AAV manufacturing technology that can be scaled and applied throughout the AskBio group. The grant will also advance development of the tool kit of inducible, repressible, tuneable and responsive expression cassettes to be adopted in the current clinical pipeline and new disease targets.

Dr David Venables, president of AskBio Europe, said: “Scottish Enterprise has played a significant role in funding the development of our technology. This grant will allow us to undertake important research into the scalability of gene therapy manufacturing to help bring potentially transformative therapies to more patients.”

Innovation minister, Ivan McKee, said: “This funding will support AskBio’s research into improving the treatment of genetic diseases, something that could be life-changing for patients. It will also create new and highly skilled job opportunities at the Company’s research and development facilities in Edinburgh. Scotland has a long and proud tradition of being at the forefront of scientific and technological advances, and it is important that that we continue to support global innovation and build Scotland’s world-leading life science sector.”

Nick Shields, head of Business Support Services at Scottish Enterprise, said: “We have supported Synpromics, now AskBio Europe, for a number of years and have been pleased to witness its growth as well as the progress of its innovative technology towards helping patients worldwide. It is therefore great to see the company taking on this huge challenge on behalf of the global pharmaceutical industry, which could lead to the development of life-changing therapies for so many.”