Empowered Patient Podcast Developing DNA Gene Therapies to Treat Chronic Inflammatory Diseases with Dr. Diem Nguyen Xalud Therapeutics
Dr. Diem Nguyen is the CEO of Xalud Therapeutics, a DNA delivery gene therapy company striving to develop and deliver medicines for large, broad-based disease indications like chronic inflammatory diseases, particularly musculoskeletal diseases like osteoarthritis of the knee and as well as neurodegenerative diseases like MS and ALS. Earlier in her career, Diem was the global President of Pfizer, covering multiple therapeutic areas, and has joined Xalud because of their ground-breaking DNA delivery platform.
Diem explains, "Gene therapy means a lot of things to a lot of people. And the first, I would say, is most people, when they think about gene therapies, think about viral AAV gene therapy. And a lot of promise is associated with that type of platform because you're seeing this potential, particularly in rare diseases. The challenges associated with AAV sometimes are the safety profile associated with that product. Our particular gene therapy is DNA gene therapy, so we do not have the challenges with genome integration, which allows us to have a potentially stronger safety profile."
"I want to be very clear when I say disease modification because it can mean many things from a definition perspective to different audiences. What I want to say specifically about our product, XT-150, is we're not looking to treat pain associated with osteoarthritis of the knee by just blocking the pain or masking the pain. What we're trying to do is help your body restore homeostasis."
"What we're saying is we're supplementing your body with interleukin-10, which then allows you to have your body naturally reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines, which then reduces the inflammation."
#XaludTherapeutics #GeneTherapy #InflammatoryDiseases #Cytokines #Inflammation #Osteoarthritis #NeurodegenerativeDiseases #ALS #MS