Mirugen – Unlocking the Power of Retina Regeneration
We have a new research news article for you from Mirugen.
Imagine a world where incurable blindness was a thing of the past. Meet Mirugen, derived from the Japanese word ‘Miru’ for ‘view’ and ‘gen’ for ‘gene,’ an exciting new biotech startup looking to ‘switch on sight’ and make this a reality.
Mirugen hope to develop a treatment viable for a variety of conditions, where vision loss is caused by faulty light sensing photoreceptors in the back of the eye. This broad approach looks to provide hope to those with conditions such as Retinitis Pigmentosa and Stargardt’s disease, for which there is currently no cure. Treatment development efforts for such conditions are heavily focussed on halting the progression of vision loss. However, Mirugen are looking to change this with their revolutionary approach to harnessing the retina’s regenerative powers, as seen in animals like chicken and fish. This focus on regeneration is similar in approach to Endogena Therapeutic’s treatment EA-2353.
Mirugen are working to unlock this regenerative ability in humans to prevent and reverse photoreceptor damage by injecting reprogramming genes into the eye. The genes, delivered in the form of an engineered virus, will stimulate stem cells to develop into new photoreceptors that can replace any damaged cells and preserve/restore vision.
The treatment has not yet reached human clinical trials, but Mirugen report promising results from preclinical and animal studies that provide hope for this revolutionary treatment approach in the future. Recent funding from the CUREator+ program will help to accelerate their research through the preclinical stage, taking them one step closer to reversing vision loss.