Gene therapy trial set to resume

The US Food and Drug Administration is allowing a controversial gene therapy trial to linkurl:resume,;http://ir.targen.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=84981&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1080820&highlight= after the trial was linkurl:halted;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53453/ when a 36-year-old participant died in July. The therapy, developed by Seattle based company Targeted Genetics, seeks to treat inflammatory arthritis, and is delivered via an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector through an injection in the arthritic joint. At a meeting of the National Institutes of Health's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) in September, RAC investigators linkurl:announced;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53593/ preliminary autopsy results of the participant, Jolee Mohr, and suggested that a massive linkurl:fungal infection,;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53589/ and not the AAV treatment, caused her death. Investigators at the University of Chicago, where Mohr died, failed to find any of the AAV vector outside of Mohr's knee, where the virus was injected. According to a Targeted Genetics press release announcing the FDA decision, when Mohr was treated with the experimental AAV, she was taking other arthritis drugs...