🍎 Apple Tree Partners says it has multiple portfolio companies at risk as it fights its key investor in court. The venture firm alleged that Rigmora Holdings, the family office of Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, is withholding money needed to keep some of its portfolio companies afloat. ATP described the situation as an “emergency” in a Delaware court filing, Endpoints News’ Kyle LaHucik reported.

What is Rigmora saying? Rigmora has alleged that ATP mismanaged the fund. The office said in a legal filing that ATP’s behavior related to seven portfolio companies was the “catalyst for this loss of trust and confidence.”

“In order to protect our rights in light of the general partner’s conduct and its attempt to seize 50% of our interests in the fund, which we see as an obvious conflict of interest, and because of our loss of trust and confidence in it, we have sought a just and equitable winding up of the fund,” the Rybolovlev family trust said in a statement to Endpoints.

What’s at stake? ATP founder Seth Harrison said in a statement that 60 employees have been laid off so far at Apertor Pharmaceuticals, Evercrisp Biosciences, Initial Therapeutics, Nereid Therapeutics and Nine Square Therapeutics. Click here to read more.

👁️ Patients and researchers are urging Johnson & Johnson to move forward with the therapy, called bota-vec, for a genetic vision loss disorder despite a failed Phase 3 trial in May. They point to a less-than-ideal trial design: “This is a failed trial, not a failed treatment,” Harvard ophthalmologist Rachel Huckfeldt, one of the researchers, told Endpoints’ Lei Lei Wu. Read her in-depth coverage of the issue here.

The therapy is designed to treat a disease called X-linked retinitis pigmentosa, which affects about 1 in 15,000 people, primarily men. At the time of the failure, J&J said the results were “directionally supportive,” and the company is still figuring out its next steps. The trial flop also comes as many pharma companies are pulling back from gene therapy, particularly those that use adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors.

In the meantime, Huckfeldt and others have publicly urged the company to file for approval, with more than 30 investigators writing a public letter to J&J last month. The letter was published by the prominent eye disease nonprofit Foundation Fighting Blindness. J&J announced a deal to acquire the therapy for $65 million upfront in 2023 from the biotech MeiraGTx.