GSK teams up with Doudna, Weissman labs to create CRISPR genomics center
GlaxoSmithKline’s latest move to reinvigorate R&D is a collaboration with two of the biggest names in CRISPR research to develop new gene editing technologies and use them to identify drug targets.
GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE:GSK; NYSE:GSK) teamed up with the labs of Jennifer Doudna at the University of California Berkeley and Jonathan Weissman at the University of California San Francisco to form the Laboratory for Genomics Research (LGR), a physical laboratory near UCSF’s Mission Bay campus that will bring together investigators from all three partners.
The lab will receive up to $67 million in funding over five years from GSK and will use CRISPR technologies to interrogate the mechanistic links between genetic mutations and disease biology. The idea is that determining how mutations cause disease will lead to new drug targets. GSK has an option to those targets; details are not disclosed.
CSO and President of R&D Hal Barron said the lab will blend GSK’s human genomics data and drug development expertise with the CRISPR-based functional genomics capabilities of the academics, and layer machine learning on top. The collaborators will focus on immunology, oncology and neuroscience.
