louisa, this latest achievement also confirms that ACTC made a good move in bringing in Mickunas as Vice President of Regulatory and also that he, himself, made the move because he saw it as a move with tremendous potential.
Interestingly, Mickunas came to ACTC from AGTC (Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation, a privately held corporation). At AGTC Mickunas was Executive Director, Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance. AGTC is a company focused on leveraging knowledge of the genetic code to treat human disease, including muscular dystrophy, emphysema. and degenerative eye diseases. It also, in fact, has three products which are potential candidates for Orphan Drug Status. AGTC had, as well, jointly developed with Genzyme Corporation a treatment for Age-Related Macular Degeneration and recently completed all the pre-clinical proof of concept and safety trials which show the treatment has high clinical potential.
This does seem to make it clear that Mickunas did decide there was more potential in the ACTC program and this continuing good news seems to be confirming that. I need only add the definitive point on this issue, Mickunas was willing to move from Florida (near the University of Florida) to Worcester, MA, in the middle of currently snow-bound New England, for his new job.
AI
