Faraz Ali, MBA, on Trends in Precision Medicine for Cardiovascular Disease

This is the third part of an interview with Faraz Ali, MBA. For the first part, click here. For the second part, click here.

“I think the whole field is at an inflection point where now there's us as well as multiple companies going after genetic forms of heart disease with either gene transfer or gene editing... And more and more people are interested in it.”

Despite availability of a large number of treatments for a range of indications under its umbrella, heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the world, even playing a bigger role than all types of cancer combined. As such, many companies and academic institutions are continuously hard at work on research to address the great unmet need remaining for patients with heart disease. One recent trend is greater emphasis on identifying the genetic basis of both rare and common cardiovascular diseases, an approach that may lead to a redefinition of some diseases into a group of smaller diseases that each arise from different genetic mutations. Naturally, this greater emphasis on genetics has also lead to a greater interest in the gene transfer therapy and gene editing therapy as modalities to address heart disease. Several companies are now working on genomic medicines for heart disease indications and research on such therapies is garnering more interest over the past few years. At the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) 27th Annual Meeting, held May 7 to 10, 2024, in Baltimore, MD, Tenaya Therapeutics presented 7 poster presentations on work relevant to their genomic medicine pipeline for cardio vascular diseases.

In an interview with CGTLive® at the conference, Faraz Ali, MBA, the chief executive officer of Tenaya, spoke about recent trends in precision medicine for cardiovascular diseases and the growing interest in gene therapy and gene editing approaches. He noted that recent technological advancements are broadening the possible cardiovascular diseases that can potentially be addressed with genomic medicines and that research may eventually progress from rare genetic cardiomyopathies to more common conditions like heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).

Click here to view more coverage of the 2024 ASGCT Annual Meeting.