Mike, the comparison to antisense is IMO right on target. For therapeutic applications one has to worry about delivery issues; doesn't Sangamo have some sort of collaboration with a "protein delivery" specialist? From the S-1:
<boiler plate> Also, delivery of ZFP transcription factors into cells in these and other environments is limited by a number of technical challenges, which we may be unable to surmount.
<TGEN connection> In order to regulate a gene, the ZFP transcription factor must be delivered to a cell. We have licensed gene transfer technology from Targeted Genetics, Inc. for use with our Universal GeneTools in pharmaceutical discovery. We are evaluating this and other technologies for the delivery of ZFPs into cells.
<SAB member> George N. ("Joe") Cox, Ph.D. is President and Chief Scientific Officer of Bolder Biotech, a protein delivery biotechnology company. Dr. Cox was Vice President, Research and Development at Sangamo from March 1995 to June 1998. He spent the previous 12 years of his career at Synergen, Inc., in various positions including Group Leader, Discovery Research, Chairman of Synergen's science counsel, Director of Animal Health Care, and Senior Scientist.
Some links:
Scroll to second paragraph of this summary of Carlos Barbas research"
cancerresearch.org
Links to some abstracts (for the PNAS articles one can click on to the full article) from Barbas (Barbas CF) group:
"Design of polydactyl zinc-finger proteins for unique addressing within complex genomes"
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
"Building zinc fingers by selection: toward a therapeutic application"
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
And from "Pabo CO"
"Dimerization of zinc fingers mediated by peptides evolved in vitro from random sequences"
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
"Analysis of zinc fingers optimized via phage display: evaluating the utility of a recognition code"
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Try also "Berg JM," for example:
"Zinc fingers in Caenorhabditis elegans: finding families and probing pathways"
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
All three gentlemen are in the SGMO SAB, as you surely know by now having digested that S-1.
And last, but not least: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
PB |
