Your missing links are here (28 May 2020)

Top Picks

• What diseases are likely to be cured by CRISPR? Check out this CRISPR infographic summarising CRISPR-related patent filings, clinical trials and top CRISPR industry players worldwide.
• Researchers in Germany develop a simple method to detect unintended on-target events and show in Cell Reports that they happen quite often in stem cells.
• Intellia Therapeutics prepares to seek regulatory green light to progress gene-editing candidate NTLA-2002 for the treatment of hereditary angioedema (HAE) into clinical studies by next year.

COVID-19

• Mammoth Biosciencesteam up with GSK and aim to have a handheld CRISPR-based COVID-19 test ready for FDA evaluation before the end of this year.
• Principal investigators from around the world open up about the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on their labs.
• Researchers in China use CRISPR-Cas9 to insert the human receptor for Sars-CoV-2 into the mouse genome, resulting in a mouse model that mimics human COVID-19 disease.

Research

• CRISPR-Cas9 mutations help to reveal early stage development path for ovarian cancer in fallopian tube organoids. On that note, some of the same researchers previously used CRISPR to cure cystic fibrosis in patient-derived organoids.
• Genome-wide CRISPR screen reveals new key player in Hepatis A infection.
• For the first time, researchers have used CRISPR to recombine entire chromosomes to combine desirable properties in food crops.
• US researchers use CRISPR in combination with a barcoding technique to develop a mouse model that can track the fates of different cell types and gene expression from embryonic development through to adulthood.

Industry

• CRISPR industry player Caribou Biosciencesappoints Cherry Thomas as Senior Vice President of clinical development. Dr. Thomas joins Caribou from Array Biopharma where she most recently served as Vice President of Clinical Development of the company’s oncology division.
• George Church spinoff swallows a key manufacturing partner as it preps CRISPR’ed pig organs for animal testing.
• Tech company Oxgene (UK) share insights on how automation technologies are benefitting gene editing.
• Bristol-Myers Squibb enters $65 million collaboration with Canadian Repare Therapeutics to develop CRISPR-based cancer treatments.

Surprising News

• Scientists in Japan have used CRISPR to created mutant albino sea urchins!
• Team at University of Maryland adapt CRISPR technology to electronically turn "on" and "off" several genes simultaneously. This may pave the way for the next generation of wearable 'smart' devices.