Your missing links are here (11 June 2020)

Some of the best stuff we picked up around the Internet

By: Rasmus Kragh Jakobsen - Jun. 11, 2020

First gene-edited CRISPR COVID-19 mice. Opens door to study infections and develop therapies.
This little CRISPR went to market. Gene-editing technology is heading towards commercial reality in pharmaceuticals, food and organ transplant.
Fantastic and incredible story on a quest to cure a genetic disease so rare, just one person in the world is known to have it. One bad gene: Harnessing genomic pioneering to save Caroline Fletcher.
Sherlock Biosciences and IDT collaborate on large scale production of Sherlocks first-ever FDA-approved CRISPR kit for COVID19 detection. We recently wrote about the kit here.
Regeneron and Intellia expand deal to develop haemophilia A and B treatments using CRISPR-Cas9.

New CRISPR clinical trial posted. A clinical trial on advanced hepatocellular carcinoma from Central South University in China using PD-1 knockout engineered T cells.
Gene-edited T cells to treat diabetes inch closer to clinical trials. Researchers edit the genes of patients' T cells to turn off the destructive autoimmune response in Type 1 diabetes. Another approach using CRISPR-Cas9 was recently described.

PacMan versus COVID19 - scientists are collaborating on a way to deliver CRISPR gene targeting system to patient cells and shred the virus.
Rapid home-based CRISPR COVID19 tests are coming together in research labs.
CSIC researchers will use CRISPR tools to destroy the COVID-19 coronavirus genome.
Big gene therapy names line up behind experimental Covid-19 vaccine.
In these COVID times with work- and home-life lines becoming blurred, here are some tips on how to cope with that 'always-on' feeling.

Impactful linking of two innovative technologies: Single-cell transcriptomics and pooled CRISPR screening. MilliporeSigma and 10x Genomics collaborate on new CRISPR screen on single cells to identify novel therapeutic targets and accelerate drug discovery.
Avectas and UC Davis collaborate on cell engineering technology. Using Avectas' non-viral Solupure delivery platform, they will study multiple cargo types, including DNA editing cargo.
Interview with genome-editing entrepreneur Alexis Rovner, co-founder of 64-x, on George Church giving her confidence to follow her dreams and tips for leading a startup.

Very fast CRISPR on demand. Spatial and temporal control of Cas9 using light-activation. The new study lets researchers study the cellular response to double-strand breaks in real-time.
CRISPR base editing let deaf mice hear again. The technique could pave the way for human treatment.
CRISPR-Cas9 of murine cell surface proteins screen reveals a receptor (CXCR4) that is essential for AML (acute myeloid leukaemia) growth and survival.
CRISPR researchers develop a dual-deaminase CRISPR base editor that enables concurrent adenine and cytosine editing.
Development of CRISPR-Cas13a-based antimicrobials capable of sequence-specific killing of target bacteria.
Researchers use in vivo CRISPR screening to discover key gene essential for the survival of leukaemia stem cells.
Good news for AAV-based gene therapy. AAV-antibodies are a central challenge of AAV gene therapy, and now researchers provide a potential solution. The results, published in Nature Medicine, could allow for those with pre-existing antibodies to pursue gene therapy as well as enable the ability to re-administer AAV vectors.

Unique cancer tumour mutations may signal safe CRISPR deployment.
Improving the safety of human pluripotent stem cell therapies using genome-edited orthogonal safeguards.
Johns Hopkins researchers unveil a new paradigm for the intrinsic regulation of CRISPR-Cas systems. In a bioRxiv paper, they show how a long-form tracrRNA is widely used to self-repress the CRISPR-Cas system and serve to prevent auto-immunity.
Suppression of unwanted CRISPR-Cas9 editing by co-administration of catalytically inactivating truncated guide RNAs.

AI and CRISPR - the future is here! Israeli CRISPR-IL consortium to develop advanced tools for better efficiency and accuracy in genome editing of plants, animals and humans. Among the wide variety of companies is TargetGene, whose gene-editing platform TGEE we wrote about here.