The University of Pennsylvania is spinning out Jim Wilson's gene therapy program into two new companies. Wilson, who has been her for 33 years, will be CEO of one of them and board chair of the other.board of trustees voted Wednesday to spin out its pioneering Gene Therapy Program led by prominent research scientist Jim Wilson into two new for-profit companies amid decreased investment in biotech.
University of Pennsylvania executive Jonathan A. Epstein told board members during a brief Zoom meeting that the gene therapy program had made fundamental contributions to treatments for genetic diseases through the discovery and development of viruses used to deliver genetic fixes. Investor appetite for cell and gene therapies, the cornerstones of the Philadelphia region’s biotech industry, has been lackluster recently. Penn’s Gene Therapy Program, which at its peak employed 407 people, laid off about a quarter of its workforce last year, blaming a reduction in research funding from the industry.Before the recent downturn in funding, revenue for the gene therapy program was about $100 million a year, Wilson said.
“Gene therapy is a very modular approach to treating diseases,” he said. Say there’s a group of five or six diseases that are very similar, but are caused by a different gene. “If we can develop an approach for the first disease, how can we leverage that for the next disease and the next disease?”