Avista Therapeutics

Join us for a lecture on "Prosthetic vision in patients with atrophic AMD"! Dr. Daniel Palanker from Stanford is visiting the department on November 6 as part of our Distinguished Lecture Series. We hope to see you there: November 6th 12:30pm at Pitt in 4.221.

How big are our eyes? The average eyeball is just shy of an inch wide, which is about half the size of an ostrich eyeball (the largest eye of land animals). But nothing compares to the giant squid, whose eyeballs are the size of a dinner plate.

10 days til the Foundation Fighting Blindness Vision Walk! On October 26th, a team of walkers from Avista will participate. You can learn more and contribute to our fundraising here: https://lnkd.in/ed_DSsDm

Eyes go way back! The first eyes appeared over 550 million years ago. Primitive lifeforms didn’t have eyeballs like humans, and many animals do. Instead, single-celled organisms had patches of photoreceptor proteins that could detect light. Learn more about how Avista is working in vision today: avistatx.com Fact source: ADV Vision

The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year. That's a lot of blinks! Learn more about eyes and how Avista is making strides in vision care: avistatx.com

We leverage our computationally guided scAAVengr platform to generate and validate a toolkit of proprietary AAV vectors. Read more about what we do: avistatx.com

Our quantitative, in vivo-based approach and clinical ophthalmology expertise allow us to rapidly translate new gene therapies to the clinic. Read more: avistatx.com

What exactly do we do at AvistaTX? Our mission is to develop innovative gene therapies for retinal diseases, including rare ophthalmic conditions that have a profound impact on quality of life. Find out more about our work: avistatx.com

Some Inherited Retinal Diseases (IRDs) are simpler to treat than others. For example, there are over 60 known genes to cause retinitis pigmentosa — This makes gene therapy very challenging. Thankfully we have some of the best scientists in the business working on gene therapies at Avista TX. Find out more about us and our work: avistatx.com

MEET OUR TEAM: Christopher J. Morrison serves as Senior Vice President of CMC. Chris brings to Avista over 10+ years of direct AAV CMC experience working at a number of startups, including Dimension Therapeutics (now part of Ultragenyx), Voyager Therapeutics, Adverum Biotechnologies, and most recently Myrtelle, Inc. as Head of Technical Operations. Having worked on over 20 different rAAV therapeutic candidates to date, Chris has led the development and implementation of both early and late-stage manufacturing processes, with corresponding analytics, for products of assorted serotype and genomic construct produced by Sf9-Baculovirus, HeLa-Adenovirus or HEK293 transient transfection-based production systems. Prior to AAV startups, he began his industrial career at Pfizer, working on the downstream purification processes for various CHO based therapeutics. He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a focus on chromatographic bioseparations. Learn more about our team: avistatx.com