Gene Therapies That Work? - EP 86 Adrian Veres

We have been promised glorious gene therapies for decades. This is supposed to be the stuff of reprogramming the body to blunt or cure diseases with something approaching a permanent fix. While gene therapy progress has been made, treatments remain rare and expensive, and it’s very tough to get the therapies to go into the desired parts of the body.

Our guest this week is here to help. He’s Adrian Veres, the chief scientific officer and co-founder of Dyno Therapeutics. Founded in 2018, Dyno has been pursuing new and better ways to deliver gene therapies via modified viruses.

Dyno was well ahead of the AI meets biotech curve, using AI models to design new viral shells that let genetic instructions get into the right places of the body. For the moment, Dyno has focused on creating delivery mechanisms for companies working on therapies aimed at the brain, eye and muscles.

In this episode, we talk with Veres about the promise and perils of gene therapy technology, some of the most recent cases where gene therapies worked and how Dyno’s technology came to be and functions. And we get Veres’s take on whether or not we’re entering a golden age of biotech on the back of AI.

Due to some poor camera work on my part, Veres, who is a tall man, looks particularly giant. Fear not, he did not harm me and was actually quite nice.

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IN THIS EPISODE

Dyno Therapeutics: https://www.dynotx.com/

The FDA framework for individualized ultra-rare disease therapies: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-launches-framework-accelerating-development-individualized-therapies-ultra-rare-diseases

Core Memory on Baby KJ and the new gene therapy playbook: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-new-gene-therapy-playbook-babykj

Core Memory’s gene-editing conversation with Eryney Marrogi: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-state-of-gene-editing-eryney-marrogi

Core Memory’s podcast with Jennifer Doudna: https://www.corememory.com/p/the-present-and-future-of-gene-editing-jennifer-doudna-crispr

TIMESTAMPS (they link out to YouTube)

0:00 Intro

3:34 Why Does Gene Therapy Still Feel Rare?

7:38 What Is Gene Therapy, Really?

14:48 How Do You Deliver DNA?

17:47 Turning a Virus Into Medicine

21:53 The 700-Letter Box

28:20 Testing a Million Designs at Once

34:28 Why Does the Liver Steal the Cure?

36:43 Getting Past the Brain’s Bouncer

43:04 Is Delivery the Missing Piece?

47:24 Can Million-Dollar Therapies Get Cheap?

52:10 Did Dyno Start Too Early?

1:00:03 Was Biology Oversold?

1:09:36 Will We Cure Every Disease in 10 Years?

1:18:20 Should You Build Your Own Peptide Stack?

1:20:55 Is China Winning the Biology Race?

1:27:40 What Baby KJ Changed

1:32:34 Should the Next Generation Study Biology?