A $53M UC Berkeley-UCSF-Genentech- Roche collaboration on brain diseases; plus Selecta, JDRF-Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Tissue Dynamics and more

University of California Berkeley and University of California San Francisco announced Thursday a research collaboration with Genentech Inc. and Roche (SIX:ROG; OTCQX:RHHBY) to develop therapies for CNS disorders. The universities will receive up to $53 million over 10 years from Genentech. The partnership, dubbed the Alliance for Therapies in Neuroscience (ATN), will initially focus on neurodegeneration, CRISPR-based therapeutics, protein degradation, functional genomics in human brain cells and sleep mechanisms and circuits. 

Selecta’s tolerogenic nanoparticles increase hepatic AAV vector expression
Selecta Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ:SELB) revealed in Science Advances that mixing its tolerogenic ImmTOR nanoparticles with adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors enhances AAV trafficking to the liver, resulting in increased hepatic transgene expression. Though the ImmTOR nanoparticles encapsulate rapamycin, an immunomodulator, to enable repeat AAV dosing, the boost to vector delivery to and expression in the liver was an added bonus; the enhanced expression was independent of the particles’ suppression of vector-directed immunity. ...