Funding will support clinical trials for therapy that could help improve digestion in people with CF
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The Cystic Fibrosis Lung Transplant Consortium Biorepository and Patient Registry, in collaboration with Cleveland Clinic, will provide critical clinical data and samples to support future research investigating complications of lung transplant.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought great challenges to cystic fibrosis care. As Michelle Prickett showed during plenary 1 of this year's North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference, CF care teams adapted to provide care and keep us safe. It also shows where CF care may be headed in the future.
After watching the second plenary of the 2021 North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference, I was incredibly impressed by the level of support the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is providing to the development of the next generation of therapeutics. Developing genetic therapies -- especially those as complex as gene editing -- will take a long time and a lot of collaboration.
Delivery of genetic therapies to affected tissues is a key challenge to developing new treatments for people with cystic fibrosis. In addition to investing in viral delivery and lipid nanoparticles, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is looking at the potential of a relatively new approach to delivery using an exceptionally small synthetic molecule called a polymer nanoparticle.
Funding will support preclinical research and early-stage clinical trials
The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s investment will go toward conducting preclinical research on a novel gene delivery vehicle. If successful, this gene delivery method could overcome some of the biggest challenges to delivering a gene therapy into the lung cells of people with cystic fibrosis.
As someone who does not qualify for Trikafta®, I took particular interest in the first plenary of the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference, which discussed potential treatments for people with nonsense and rare mutations. I learned that researchers are exploring a variety of options, and some early research has shown promising results.
The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is providing up to $5 million to develop a method to deliver a healthy copy of the CFTR gene into the lung cells of people with CF that is unlikely to trigger an immune system response.
Carbon Biosciences is the first company to publicly launch from the Foundation’s collaboration with Longwood Fund and the first to work alongside CF Foundation researchers at the Foundation’s therapeutics lab