Sangamo BioSciences Receives $6.4M Strategic Partnership Award from CIRM

Sangamo BioSciences, Inc.

announced that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has granted the Company a $6.4 million Strategic Partnership Award to develop a potentially curative ZFP Therapeutic for beta-thalassemia based on the application of its zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) gene-editing technology in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs).  The four year grant provides matching funds for preclinical work that will support an Investigational New Drug (IND) application and a Phase 1 clinical trial in transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia patients.  The grant application entitled "A Treatment for Beta-thalassemia via High Efficiency Targeted Genome Editing of Hematopoietic Stem Cells" won the highest scientific score and was the only application recommended for funding in this round of CIRM's Strategic Partnership Awards. "Sangamo's powerful and precise ZFN-genome editing technology enables modification of a patient's own stem cells and potentially provides a safer approach to current therapies for hemoglobinopathies such as beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease," said Mark Walters, M.D., Director of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Children's Hospital & Research Center Oakland and a member of the clinical team that will be conducting the Phase 1 clinical trial