SanoGene Therapeutics thinks it will be able to enhance outcomes for glioblastoma patients by following the unavoidable brain surgery with an injection of targeted plasmids containing short sequences of RNA.

A venture-backed Canadian biotechnology industry is in its infancy, but faced with hostile capital markets, start-ups need clear exit plans. Consolidation's already started.

Human Genome Sciences believes its lead in genomics--it claims to have nearly all human genes in its database--is already letting it beat the biotech odds in the clinic by allowing it to pick better proteins to develop and then follow them up with a virtually inexhaustible source of new candidates. Skeptics don't like the company's arithmetic.

The new gene therapy start-ups are learning to live with the technology’s limitations--and even to exploit them. While systemic treatments have generally failed, largely because doctors couldn’t deliver high-enough and frequent-enough doses to overcome the relatively low transfection rates and short-term expression, new companies are targeting localized diseases, in vascular medicine, wound care and certain neurological conditions, in which treatment doesn’t require long-term expression and where direct delivery of genes maximizes the effective dose.