Your missing links are here (17 April 2020)

Top Picks

• Testing and speed are essential for stopping the COVID19 pandemic. Thursday the first CRISPR-based COVID19 detection technology was published by Charles Chui in Nature Biotechnology and is much faster than the standard method. Also here.
• Here is an overview of two teams developing CRISPR-based detection of COVID19.
• And if You just need one stop the Data Journalism team at the Financial Times do a fantastic job of crunching the numbers.

More COVID19

• CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna opens lab to run Covid-19 tests.

• Old-school video-game PACMAN gets a whole new twist. In a Cell pre-proof scientist at Stanford have developed a CRISPR-Cas13 strategy for shredding COVID19 in human lung epithelial cells.

• Video interview with CRISPR and genomics-pioneer George Church on COVID19, future trends and more.

Research

• A CRISPR-based assay for the detection of opportunistic infections from simple urine sampling is a quick and easy way to monitor immunosuppressed kidney transplant patients. Published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
• A study in Nature Chemical Biology led by CRISP-pioneer Emmanuelle Charpentier narrows CRISRP-Cas9 precision down to two groups of arginines in the Cas9 endonuclease.
• Symptoms in ALS Mouse Model Improve with CRISPR Base Editing according to a study in Molecular Therapy.

Reviews

• Recent review on multiplexing CRISPR technologies for gene editing

Industry

• Avectas just raised $20 million to accelerate its novel non-viral delivery platform for gene modified cell therapy products.

• Cellectis' new patent widen it's TALEN-based technology for developing universal CAR-T cells for immunotherapies to CRISPR-Cas9-based tech.

• Evotec Makes Move into Gene Therapy with Takeda Deal

Heh, huh, wow

• Could a rogue scientist use CRISPR to conjure another pandemic?
• Informative infographic: How to overcome the challenges of gene therapy manufacturing.

• CRISPR gene editing spotlight by the "congressional watchdog," GAO (The U.S. Government Accountability Office).