Promising Gene Therapy Company Spark Therapeutics to Go Public

January 5, 2014 | Spark Therapeutics, a company with a strong Phase III drug candidate bidding to be the first gene therapy approved for use in the U.S., has filed for an IPO, planning to sell $86 million in public shares. Spark is majority owned by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where the biotechnology underpinning the company was first developed and tested. While gene therapies have struggled to recover from fatal safety issues in past decades, new technologies seem to have paved the way for safe, one-use, potentially curative treatments for a wide range of rare genetic diseases, and Spark is a top contender to be first to market as the FDA reevaluates a new generation of these therapies. FierceBiotech