Still a relatively new technology, CRISPR has been heralded in recent years as having the potential to tackle a range of diseases. And now, it has finally proved its worth. In a world first, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved CASGEVY – the CRISPR-based gene therapy developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR […]
HIV continues to represent a global health burden, with the World Health Organization (WHO) estimating that, in 2022, there were 39 million people living with the virus. But there is still no effective cure for it. The only option patients have is antiretroviral therapy, which, although it represents a major milestone in HIV treatment and […]
This week, our guest on the podcast is Mark Kotter, founder of clock.bio. clock.bio, a sister company to bit.bio, which Kotter also founded and is the CEO of, aims to extend and improve quality of life by reversing the harmful effects of time in our cells, harnessing the regenerative capabilities of human pluripotent stem cells […]
On January 7, 2022, a surgery was performed on David Bennett to give him a new heart. But this was no ordinary transplant surgery. Instead of receiving a heart from a human donor, the 57-year-old, who did not qualify for a traditional transplant, received a pig heart. This surgery marked a historic breakthrough, becoming the […]
Over the past couple of years, base editing, a recent offshoot of the heralded CRISPR/Cas 9 technology, has been doing its rounds in the biotech space. Now, base editing has finally set foot into clinical trials for the first time in the U.S.. American precision medicine company Beam Therapeutics treated its first patient with its […]
For many people, when they hear China and genetic engineering in the same sentence, it is often synonymous with scandal, and gene-edited babies may spring to mind. And, although it is true that nearly five years ago, researcher He Jiankui infamously claimed he had created the first ever gene-edited babies, before going to prison for […]
A research team from the LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) has developed a new way to break through the current limited throughput in optimizing precise genome editors at scale, engineer hundreds of base editor variants in parallel instead of current one-by-one testing, and informing users of the most suitable ones […]
CRISPR-based microbial gene therapy company SNIPR Biome ApS has announced positive interim clinical results from its phase 1 clinical trial with SNIPR001. SNIPR Biome’s SNIPR001 is the first CRISPR-armed phage therapeutic developed to specifically target and remove E. coli, including antibiotic-resistant strains, from the human gastrointestinal tract. The work was supported by CARB-X, a global […]
HuidaGene Therapeutics, a clinical-stage genome-editing company, says the National Science Review has published data from its study of the world’s first DNA base editor converting guanine to cytosine/thymine (pyrimidine), or G-to-Y. The company has filed an international patent application for the glycosylase-based guanine base editor (gGBE) and owns the exclusive global rights to the underlying […]
Scribe Therapeutics Inc., a company creating genetic medicines through its CRISPR by Design approach to genetic modification, has announced a strategic collaboration with Prevail Therapeutics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Company. The deal gives Prevail exclusive rights to Scribe Therapeutics’ CRISPR X-Editing (XE) technologies for the development of in vivo therapies directed […]
A new CRISPR-based drug candidate targeting E. coli in the gut microbiome is in phase 1 clinical trials. According to a new paper published in Nature Biotechnology, it may improve the well-being of blood cancer patients and reduce their mortality rate from E. coli infections. Many people have experienced infections from E. coli, which are […]