Termination of Novartis Gene Therapies Rett program

Many supporters of Reverse Rett were disappointed to learn that Novartis Gene Therapies announced that they have terminated their Rett program this week.

You can read the full announcement here. But do not be discouraged. There are still other gene therapy products moving full speed ahead to clinical trials.

Companies have many reasons for terminating trials which are not always apparent or disclosed to patient communities.

Novartis has indicated that they will publish their data later this year.

In the meantime, this does not affect the other Rett gene therapy programs.

Here you can read a ‘perspectives’ article by RSRT’s Monica Coenraads that has been published in response to the Novartis news.

The take home message is that whilst this program was generated from the RSRT MECP2 and Gene Therapy Consortia, multiple other programs including the Taysha Gene Therapies program were generated at the same time. 

Reverse Rett has contributed significantly to the RSRT MECP2 and Gene Replacement Therapy Consortia over the last eleven years. 

We have supported RSRT because we know their approach has always been about pursuing multiple approaches in parallel so that if one approach fails for any reason, we can fall back on others. 

We are grateful for our continued partnership with RSRT and to all the companies who are continuing to work on gene replacement programs for Rett Syndrome.