Innovative Genomics Institute and Danaher Join Forces to Accelerate and Scale Up the Development of CRISPR Cures
The Beacon for CRISPR Cures aims to create a roadmap for rapidly developing genome-editing therapies.
The story of CRISPR in medicine so far has been one of remarkable speed. It took just 11 years from the 2012 paper in which Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) founder Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier and colleagues first described CRISPR genome editing to reach the first CRISPR-based therapy approved by regulators in the UK and the US. New medical advances often take multiple decades before they start to benefit the public, and it’s common for a clinical trial using even a well-established approach to take 10 years or more.
The story of CRISPR in medicine so far has been one of remarkable speed. It took just 11 years from the 2012 paper in which Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) founder Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier and colleagues first described CRISPR genome editing to reach the first CRISPR-based therapy approved by regulators in the UK and the US. New medical advances often take multiple decades before they start to benefit the public, and it’s common for a clinical trial using even a well-established approach to take 10 years or more.
“It is imperative that the public health impact of CRISPR expands rapidly beyond the initial, modest-in-size cohort of diseases currently pursued by the biotechnology sector, and the way to get there is to put the power of CRISPR as a therapeutic platform to full use,” says Fyodor Urnov, IGI’s Director of Technology and Translation.
To take on the challenge of scaling up CRISPR cure development, the IGI is partnering with Danaher, a leading global life sciences and diagnostics innovator, to create a new collaborative center. The Danaher-IGI Beacon for CRISPR Cures seeks to use the unique programmable power of CRISPR genome editing to address hundreds of genetic diseases within a unified research, development, and regulatory framework. The collaboration enables a substantial new research program at the IGI and is also the largest investment yet from the Danaher Beacons program, which funds pioneering academic research with the goal of developing innovative technologies and applications for human health. The IGI team will receive support from Danaher and several of its operating companies, including IDT, Cytiva, Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, and Aldevron, which has previously collaborated with the IGI in advancing CRISPR-editing tools for neurologic diseases.
“At Danaher, we want to accelerate and scale adoption of the cutting-edge biomedical technologies that stand to benefit humanity the most,” says Rainer Blair, Danaher’s President and CEO. “We are thrilled to join forces with some of the finest scientific minds in gene editing at the IGI, bringing R&D and manufacturing talent, technology, and expertise from across several of our operating companies to create transformative gene-editing solutions.”
The collaboration builds on the inherent strengths of the two organizations — the cutting-edge research in genome editing and translating it to clinical trials of the IGI and its partners at UCSF and UCLA, and the industry-leading manufacturing capabilities and technology of Danaher and its operating companies — to reach a shared goal: impact at scale.
“We can develop CRISPR cures in a laboratory, but at the end of the day we need a way to turn those into clinical products for thousands of patients,” says Doudna. “For this, we need industrial-scale solutions to make these cures and make sure they are safe and effective before delivering them to people.”
“The IGI’s central mission is to develop CRISPR solutions that benefit the public and are accessible to all,” adds Ringeisen. “Our partnership with Danaher on the Beacon for CRISPR Cures helps make that vision a reality.”
