Comprehensive gene prediction and therapy platform for local, skin-specific, and safe delivery of therapies to treat rare monogenetic skin diseases and aging
The skin is the largest organ in the body, and carries out multiple vital functions, including protective barrier functions against the loss of moisture and mechanical, UV and other injuries, immune defense functions, as well as sensory functions. For maintaining its integrity and multifaceted performances, skin relies on a range of different cell types that compose and support its layered organization, each expressing specific molecules that together facilitate physical cell interactions and communication between them, as well as specialized functions.
To overcome the lack of truly curative and targeted treatments, a multidisciplinary Wyss team has developed a comprehensive gene therapy platform that combines a new computational target discovery platform with improved skin cell-specific adenovirus-associated (AAV) gene delivery vehicles, and a novel biomaterials-mediated local delivery of the genetic payloads to affected areas of the skin.
The Wyss team found that key targets in aging biology could be leveraged as therapeutics for monogenic diseases, as the genes affected in such diseases were also powerful determinants of the aging process. Using their new-found understanding of aging dynamics, the team has built a time-resolved genetic network of skin aging, and is currently validating novel age-driving genetic targets identified from the resulting map in cell and animal studies.
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