Science Advisory Board spoke with Kili at last week's 2022 Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa in Carlsbad, CA, where he laid out his vision for where Antion Biosciences is heading and what the industry needs to do to cure diseases with significant unmet medical needs.

"If we want to bring cell and gene therapy into the future, we really need to think about ways of addressing larger patient populations and doing it in a way that is much more efficient," said Kili, who is also co-chair of the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy annual meeting. "That's really where Antion is moving towards."

Kili said Antion has taken "a look at the technology that's out there at the moment" -- particularly in terms of autologous versus allogeneic -- and the Swiss cell and gene engineering company's microRNA technology (miCAR platform) is a novel way of approaching allogeneic cell creation by enabling simultaneous silencing of multiple gene targets, while overcoming the challenges faced by existing gene editing approaches.

"We can then address many more patients from a lot of cells," Kili said. "That in itself brings down the cost of goods and hopefully makes these therapies much more available to patients."

Watch this video to learn more.