Penn’s Jim Wilson leaves to found 2 biotechs

Jim Wilson, the University of Pennsylvania scientist who set up one of the earliest academic gene therapy centers, is leaving the school this fall and taking the Gene Therapy Program (GTP) with him. The GTP will be discontinued Oct. 1, at which point its intellectual property and most of its employees will transfer to two for-profit companies: GEMMA Biotherapeutics and Franklin Biolabs. Wilson will lead GEMMA as CEO, overseeing the development of gene therapies for rare diseases, and he will chair Franklin, which will be a contract research organization.