Bets Placed On CRISPR/Cas9

Abstract

In 2015, more than $420 million went into funding four inventor-backed start-up companies exploiting CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing methods. The investments came despite legal and ethical uncertainty around use of the breakthrough technology. In April, the University of California system challenged a foundational patent awarded a year earlier to Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. UC asked for a U.S. Patent & Trademark Office interference review because of competing claims from UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna and her European collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier. Meanwhile, because the gene-editing approach is simple, efficient, and accessible to most scientists, its use in R&D exploded during the year. Commercial reagents became more available, as did engineered cell lines and new animal models of disease. Work began on therapeutic applications. Amid the R&D rush, Chinese scientists reported that they had tried to alter a disease-related gene in nonviable human embryos (Protein Cell 2015, DOI: 1...