MIAMI — Dr. Alfonso Sabater pulled up two photos of Antonio Vento Carvajal’s eyes. One showed cloudy scars covering both eyeballs. The other, taken after months of gene therapy given through eyedrops, revealed no scarring on either eye.

Antonio, who’s been legally blind for much of his 14 years, can see again.

The teen was born with dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, a rare genetic condition that causes blisters all over his body and in his eyes. But his skin improved when he joined a clinical trial to test the world’s first topical gene therapy. That gave Sabater an idea: What if it could be adapted for Antonio’s eyes?

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

The exit is the group’s third in five months, as AbbVie exited PhRMA in December and Teva Pharmaceuticals left in February.

Read the rest…

Almost a year ago, three top investors at Lux Capital and Obvious Ventures announced they were leaving the firms, teasing on Twitter that they were starting “something new.”

That something is a new venture capital firm, which launched Wednesday with $350 million for its first fund.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

But research presented at the American Society of Hematology meeting in New Orleans suggested that a second-generation drug called zanubrutinib from BeiGene is about to unseat ibrutinib as “the king on the block” for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, said Catherine Diefenbach, medical director of the lymphoma program at the NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…