Gene therapy for pets: French company buys start-up cofounded by Penn’s Jim Wilson

University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson’s work on gene therapy is the basis of several treatments for rare human diseases, the first of which was approved in 2017.

Up next, gene therapy for Fido and Whiskers?

On Thursday, a large French manufacturer of veterinary medicines announced it was purchasing Scout Bio, a Philadelphia-based start-up that Wilson cofounded to develop gene therapies for pets.

Ceva Santé Animale, based in Libourne, France, with 7,000 employees in 47 countries, is privately held and did not disclose how much it was paying for Scout. The French company said it would maintain a “strong relationship” with Penn’s Gene Therapy Program, of which Wilson is the director.

In an interview, Wilson said that means Ceva will contract with the Penn facility to help develop and test gene therapy “vectors” — the inactivated viruses that are used to deliver beneficial genes into the cells of patients, whether human or animal. The pet gene therapies will be aimed at common animal ailments such as arthritis and are expected to cost far less than gene therapies for rare human disease.

The deal with such an established global player represents a vote of confidence in Philadelphia’s strength as a center of gene therapy research, said Wilson, who has an ownership stake in Scout, as does Penn.

“They decided to build on the presence of Scout in Philadelphia and the relationship with us, which is testimony to our ecosystem,” he said.

The move comes after a difficult two years for the biotech industry, with high interest rates fueling a decline in investment and layoffs at life-science start-ups in Philadelphia, Boston, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Penn’s Gene Therapy Program was among those that cut jobs, laying off a quarter of its staff in December.

Asked about the job cuts, Wilson said they were “unfortunately necessary” but that the Ceva acquisition is a sign that the outlook is improving.

“We’re headed in the right direction,” he said. “The markets are starting to turn, and we have a lot to offer.”

Gene therapies for pets will be technologically similar to the treatments that have worked so well in treating rare human diseases, but they will be different in two key respects, Wilson said. They will be aimed at common pet diseases such as arthritis, anemia, and dermatitis, and they will be a lot less expensive than gene therapy treatments for humans.

Human gene therapies tend to cost well above $1 million, whereas the pet varieties likely will be priced in the hundreds or thousands of dollars, the scientist said.

That still may sound like a lot, but as with human gene therapies, the pet treatments will be administered just once. The viral vectors are engineered to deliver genetic instructions inside the animals’ cells, enabling them to make some sort of key protein that they are unable to make on their own. A onetime treatment will be far easier for pet owners than repeated injections of the protein in question, which would require monthly trips to the vet, Wilson said.

Pet gene therapies will cost less than their human counterparts for several reasons, he said. Among them: There are fewer regulatory hurdles in developing drugs for animals, so the process is less expensive. And because Scout Bio (now Ceva) is targeting diseases that affect many thousands of animals, there will be economies of scale.

Ceva officials did not share any projections on when pet gene therapies might be commercially available. But the underlying concept is already proven, because human gene therapies were first tested in animals.

The first such therapy to be approved — Luxturna, the Spark Therapeutics treatment for a rare form of blindness — was previously tested in dogs by Penn scientists.

“We know the technology works in cats and dogs, because those studies were essential to move into the human space,” Wilson said.