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Ring Therapeutics, a gene therapy startup launched by Flagship Pioneering, has laid off just under 20% of its staff, or 19 employees, Flagship confirmed to STAT.

The move comes as Sonata Therapeutics, another Flagship startup, has let go of a third of its staff, part of a broader hunkering down by platform companies. As funding for private biotechs remains scarce, startups hoping to develop new technologies — always an expensive, setback-ridden process — have had to make tough choices on staffing and priorities.

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Ring had been particularly ambitious. The company is trying to engineer a new class of viruses as vehicles for delivering genes into patients’ cells. These viruses, tiny bugs called anelloviruses, had the potential to be safer and more versatile than the viruses currently used for gene therapy, called AAVs.

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