Replay Launches Its First HSV Gene Therapy Company, Eudora, Focused on Retinal Eye Disease

Replay announced the launch of Eudora, an HSV gene therapy company targeting genetic retinal diseases. It is the first of Replay’s product companies to leverage its high payload capacity herpes simplex virus (HSV) delivery vector, synHSV. Eudora’s co-founders, Professors Joe Glorioso, Mark Blumenkranz, David Schaffer, and Vinit Mahajan, are seasoned entrepreneurs, and global leaders in the fields of HSV and retinal disease gene therapy.

Replay’s distinctive corporate structure separates technology development from therapeutic product development within disease area-specific product companies. Eudora is the first of Replay’s four synHSV gene therapy product companies, with the other three applying big DNA gene therapy to monogenic diseases of the brain, skin, and muscle.

Eudora’s pipeline includes retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt disease, and Usher syndrome type 1B. Replay’s synHSV technology is a high payload capacity gene-deleted HSV-1 vector capable of delivering up to 8 times the payload of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors. This facilitates the delivery of genes that are too big to fit into AAV and enables polygenic gene therapy. Replay is, additionally, developing an HSV vector that can deliver up to 30 times the AAV payload.

“Replay’s differentiated corporate structure allows its platform technologies to be applied to indications in areas of high unmet medical need across a portfolio of focused product companies," Adrian Woolfson, Executive Chairman, President and Co-Founder of Replay, said in a company news release. "Eudora, the first of these, is led by some of the world’s most authoritative experts in HSV and retinal gene therapy who are also seasoned entrepreneurs, and three of which have co-founded publicly listed companies. Eudora provides Replay with the first opportunity to showcase the differentiated payload capacity of its synHSV technology, which we believe has transformative potential within the field of eye gene therapy and beyond.”

“We are thrilled to be working with such a distinguished group of scientists, entrepreneurs, and physicians. Eudora is the first of a series of Replay product companies, each of which showcases unique aspects of our suite of proprietary genomic medicine platform technologies," Lachlan MacKinnon, CEO and Co-Founder of Replay, said in the news release. "We believe that our distinctive paradigm of separating platform development from product development represents the most optimal structure for efficiently leveraging the potential of our genomic medicine technology platforms and for bringing forward a new generation of genomic medicines to patients with high unmet medical needs.”