Evox bags from Duchenne UK to engineer exosomes

Evox Therapeutics has secured £ 655,000 in funding from Duchenne UK, to support its exosome-based therapeutic platform for the condition.

Duchenne is a highly debilitating, progressive, muscle-wasting disorder caused by the lack of functional dystrophin protein, for which there is currently no cure.

Delivery of dystrophin or these short variants to these patients has the potential to be highly effective treatment option for the condition, the firm noted.

Evox is engineering exosomes, the body's natural delivery system, to enable a wide variety of drugs to reach previously inaccessible tissues and compartments, such as crossing the blood brain barrier to deliver drugs to the central nervous system, intracellular delivery of proteins, and extra -hepatic delivery of RNA therapeutics.

The role of exosomes in delivering full-length dystrophin or their short-term variants in Duchenne.

"These patients," said Antonin de Fougerolles, Evox 'chief executive.

"This work will also be beneficial for patients who are patients, but also for patients with other musculoskeletal diseases."

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, "Emily Crossley and Alex Johnson, co-chief executives of Duchenne UK, said:" We are delighted to be working with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

"One of the most challenging aspects of the problem is that they are already known to have pre-existing antibodies – they are 'resistant' to the virus – and so reach its target.

"Exosomes could provide a potentially new method for effectively, and consistently delivering genetic material encoding for dystrophin to muscles without the problem of pre-existing antibodies."