Shannon Boye
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Atsena Therapeutics, and Professor & Chief of the Division of Cellular and Molecular Therapy at the University of Florida, specializing in gene therapies for inherited retinal diseases.
1
APPEARANCES
1
PODCASTS
Jul 30, 2026
Erin HarrisHOST
So what made this particular candidate stand out? What level of confidence did the preclinical data give you that it was, it was in fact ready to move to the clinic?
Shannon BoyeGUEST
Um, and first, I have to say that we learned an absolute ton from our ongoing clinical trial in XLRS that supported the design of our Stargardt's programs.
Shannon BoyeGUEST
And in fact, we're using some of the same tools and principles that are driving success in that ongoing pivotal trial.
Shannon BoyeGUEST
Um, and I have to say that we all at Atsena appreciate that Stargardt's is a crowded space, and that for us to be successful, our treatment really has to be solidly differentiated from the competition.
Shannon BoyeGUEST
Um, so to do that, we designed several different dual-vector constructs, and we compared them for both safety and efficacy in an animal model of Stargardt's disease called the ABCA4 knockout mouse.
Erin HarrisHOST
Talk to us a little bit about how these two proprietary technologies work together to overcome the obstacles in treating Stargardt disease, um, and whether that's, you know, delivering the full-length ABCA4 gene to the central retina.