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Dr. Roy Levitt, Executive Chairman of Adolore BioTherapeutics, Presented at the Next Generation Gene Therapy Vectors Summit

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A person is sat holding their painful knee

Adolore BioTherapeutics, Inc., announced that Roy Clifford Levitt, MD, Clinical Professor at the University of Miami, Principal Investigator and Program Director of the NIH, NINDS, HEAL UH3 Award supporting ADB-102 development for the treatment of chronic knee pain due to osteoarthritis, (“OA”), and founder and Executive Chairman of Adolore presented the Company’s breakthrough non-opioid gene therapy programs for chronic pain at the Next Generation Gene Therapy Vectors Summit on July 31, 2025 in Boston.

Dr. Levitt presented the latest safety and efficacy data on Adolore’s replication defective, disease-free, HSV viral vectors during his talk entitled: Rethinking Vector Choice: Utilizing Optimized HSV to Enhance Safety & Efficacy.

He presented evidence of long-lasting (>7 months), profound analgesia (equivalent to high doses of opioids) for their HSV gene therapy with regional administration (single intra-articular knee joint injection) in model systems. Additional data demonstrated excellent cellular tropism (neuronal specificity), biodistribution, and shedding characteristics. Dr. Levitt also highlighted how regional administration minimizes off-target effects, improving safety, efficacy, and minimizes immunogenicity.

Adolore is advancing two preclinical development programs: a lead program for knee pain due to OA and a program for erythromelalgia, (“EM”), an orphan neuropathic pain indication for which there are no FDA-approved treatments. EM is a rare, heritable, chronic and debilitating pain disease.

In model systems, replication-defective, disease-free, herpes simplex virus (rdHSV) gene therapy expressing an analgesic carbonic anhydrase-8 (CA8*) peptide variant corrects somatosensory hyperexcitability by activating Kv7 voltage-gated potassium channels, thereby producing profound, long-lasting analgesia. Adolore has achieved proof-of-concept in animal models, validating the mechanism of action in knee pain from OA and EM.

For more information, read the original press release.

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