Spark Therapeutics

Most recently, he served as chief medical officer at Sparring Vision, a clinical stage genomic medicine company.

Previously, Dr. Chung served as ophthalmology therapeutic area leader at Spark Therapeutics, where he played an instrumental role in the development of Luxturna, the first gene therapy approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency for use in a blinding genetic disease.

Dr. Chung, thank you so much for coming on the podcast again.

Yes.

And that's really how things began.

And I was fortunate enough to be with that program for many, many years through academia.

And then eventually with Spark Therapeutics, where we were able to do the first ever gene therapy for genetic disease.

So I've been very privileged.

Robert Czisch presented this, a- and I'll tell you, I think we're on the verge of seeing our second approved gene therapy.

You know, it's been, it's been almost a decade since Spark Therapeutics got Luxturna approved for RPE65-mediated, uh, conditions, and so, uh, this looks positive.

Interestingly, that lower dose and the higher dose look fairly equivalent.

So it, it's gonna be what, what are they gonna file for, the lower dose, the higher dose? And, uh, and what's the durability of it? Are we gonna see patients that need to be retreated? What's gonna be the cost? Where do these-

You have helped leaders and teams tackle complex culture and talent challenges in over 30 countries, that's fascinating to me, and across 180 nations.

You've built gl- global talent pipelines that drive real growth, earned top leadership talent development awards, co-authored, uh, influential tools and publication, and your career spans, ready? Penn Medicine, Spark Therapeutics, Special Olympics International, and major international development organizations.

You slacker, you.

So let's get ready to shine a light on what it truly means to build cultures and leaders that can thrive on a global stage.

Yeah, it's great, Scott, to see monogenic inherited retinal diseases targeted with gene therapy.

It's been almost a decade since we had Spark Therapeutics come out with the first treatment for an inherited retinal disease.

I can't believe it's been almost a decade, and this is just now our first potentially approvable treatment.

gene therapy for another monogenic disease, but certainly very exciting to see a possible treatment for these fairly profoundly impacted individuals.

X-linked RP mainly affects males, causes profound vision loss.

And there's a lot of implications around identifying these needles in a haystack.

I think it's going to be more common and more diagnosed and more opportunity for treatment than what we saw with RPE65-LCA with Spark Therapeutics.

But certainly starting to have more and more therapies for these patients is... without a doubt, a good thing.

You know, I mean very excited.

It's, it's been almost a decade since we had Spark Therapeutics come out-

Mm-hmm

... with Luxturna, the first gene therapy for an inherited retinal disease.

Th- this really makes the case for the genetic testing we've had access to for the last decade or so.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and a lot of that w- came out from Foundation Fighting Blindness and Spark Therapeutics sponsoring, trying to find that needle in the hayst- haystack, so to speak.

Um, I'll tell you, identifying these patients I think will be easier.