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By Nick Sohr, Managing Editor, MDBIZNews

Seven-year-old biotech firm Lentigen has found an unlikely ally in its effort to best some of the most debilitating diseases, viruses and genetic disorders.

The Gaithersburg company is using viruses to manufacture and deliver what it hopes are life-saving vaccines and therapies to patients suffering from AIDS, brain cancer and a host of other maladies.

Think about this as a disruptive technology, said Tim Ravenscroft, Lentigens CEO. Were not looking here at incremental improvements for patients. Were looking at disease cures and really transforming a lot of these diseases for patients. This is not like a slight improvement on an existing therapy. Were trying to really transform the way patients are managed.

The key to Lentigens approach is lentiviral vectors, viruses that the company cooks up from scratch to accomplish their goals.

These lentiviruses are a subset of retroviruses, which hijack cells and splice in segments of DNA to force the captive cells to reproduce the virus.

What these viruses biologically were designed to do, or evolved to do, is to enter cells and take over their genetic machinery to produce more of themselves, Ravenscroft said. Weve modified that ability so that they now do what we want them to do.

Diseases caused by single gene defects are great targets for Lentigens technology, Ravenscroft said.

The company is working on a therapy for hemophilia A. The genetic blood disorder leaves victims without enough of a protein essential to clotting and is treated now with regular injections to make up for the deficiency.

Lentigens therapy calls for stem cells to be extracted from a patient. The cells are exposed to a lentivirus of the companys design that enters the cells and inserts DNA that will allow the cells to produce the missing protein. The stem cells are then returned to the patient who, the company hopes, will be able to produce the protein on his own.

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