Two Families Facing DMD Launches Biotech Start-up Dart Therapeutics

The effort by two families to buy and develop a drug that holds promise in treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy — described today in the WSJ — is the result of an innovative new model set up to support the burgeoning phenomenon of do-it-yourself drug development. Before the Seckler and Wicka families bought halofuginone, a drug that showed promise in experiments done with Duchenne mice, they set up Dart Therapeutics. Dart is funded by foundations set up by the two families, and run by Eugene Williams, a drug industry veteran with 25 years’ experience, including seven years at Genzyme.