Gene therapy is coming. Indeed, it’s already in Dallas.
Millions of North Texas-area patients with previously intractable diseases will benefit from gene therapies’ medical miracles. That’s in part because UT Southwestern Medical Center is playing a prominent role in gene-therapy development.
Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals recently announced it is merging with Exonics Therapeutics, a biotech company co-founded by Dr. Eric Olsen, who chairs UT Southwestern’s molecular biology department.
Gene therapy targets defective or missing genes and repairs or replaces them. The most common method is by using viral vectors, that is, modified viruses that insert new genetic code into defective human cells. UT Southwestern’s gene therapy center is one of a small number of such centers that produces the virus that transports genes to the defective cells.
See the full article on the Institute for Policy Innovation here