Metagenomi, a US-based biotech exploring natural microbial communities to discover and develop next-generation therapeutics closed a Series A funding round yesterday with $75 million to support company expansion and development of its therapeutic gene-editing pipeline.
Inscripta announces the first commercial shipment of its Onyx™ digital genome engineering platform and closes a new financing round with $150 million. Onyx is a high throughput benchtop platform for CRISPR-based genome editing and analysis. The synthetic biology foundry GeneMill at the Universtiy of Liverpool is the first European player to receive the Onyx platform.
Research
Researchers in India have developed a tunable doxycycline (dox)-inducible Cas9 expression system for genome editing in iPSC lines using virally delivered Cas9 and gRNAs. The findings were published in Methods in Molecular Biology today.
On 21st April 2021, CRISPR Medicine News will host its very first webinar and attendance is open to all. The webinar’s two speakers will explore the topic ‘Certainty after CRISPR’, looking at the expected and unexpected events that may occur during CRISPR experiments. Find out more and register to attend here.
Registration is still open for the annual CRISPR conference to be held virtually in June 2021. Abstract submission closes at the end of next week. Find programme and registration details here.
Genetic conditions rewire our bodies - but science is learning to unpick them. In this episode of RAZOR Science Show, Frankie McCamley speaks to Dr Leslie Gordon, founder of the Progeria Research Foundation that led the discovery of the exact mutation behind progeria, opening the door for possible gene therapies. Watch the episode here. David Liu's group at Broad institute of MIT and Harvard has made major advances towards curing progeria with base editing technology. Check out our recent interview with David Liu to learn more about this work.
Charity organisation Fight for Sight is funding cutting-edge gene-editing research at University College London, which will undertake the first study to investigate direct CRISPR-based repair of disease-causing mutations in photoreceptor cells in human models of inherited retinal diseases such as Stargardt disease, retinitis pigmentosa and Leber’s congenital amaurosis.
Podcasts and interviews
David Liu, Professor at Harvard, the Broad and Howard Hughes Medical Institute talks The Sheekey Science Show about th future of CRISPR (base & prime) and epigenome editing. Watch the recording here.
Walter Isaacson, author of recent book ‘The Code Breaker’ talks to Ezra Klein about the implications of humanity’s awesome, terrifying takeover of evolution in last week’s Ezra Klein Show. Listen in here or read the podcast transcript here.
CRISPR Therapeutics CEO Samarth Kulkarni joins the Bid podcast to discuss how the company has advanced clinical trials for CRISPR-based therapies for sickle cell disease, beta thalassemia and cancer. Listen in here.