We want to save lives and make lives better.
And we believe that we have this incredibly
powerful technology that has the ability to
do that.
I'm Jeff Galvin, I'm the CEO of American Gene
Technologies, and we're a gene and cell therapy
company here in Rockville, Maryland.
So for people who aren't familiar with gene
and cell therapy--what that is is that we
have this ability now to reprogram DNA.
We can marshal the power that viruses have
to change your operating system, your DNA
of the cell for better health.
Instead of them carrying malevolent code that
would hijack a cell to do what the virus wants
it to do...
We can now crack open viruses, scoop out the
instructions that they are carrying that are
meant to go to your cell and do their bidding,
and throw that away.
And we can put whatever we want inside there.
We can install genes that mitigate the symptoms
of disease, or replace things that are broken
in you.
For many years, we've been developing those
fundamental building blocks of this technology,
and a huge library of viral vectors that we
can mix and match for a wide variety of different
diseases.
We can prove that we've got a key that unlocks
immunity to HIV.
That is bigger than anything that I can think
of right now that's come out of gene and cell
therapy so far.
But that would just be the first thing for
us.
And that's what's special about AGT.
Maryland is a great place to start a business
like this.
We happen to be at the epicenter of a gene
and cell therapy technological explosion.
So it's all about the resources, and they're
starting to hit a critical mass point here.
