CRISPR start-up Scribe raises $100 million

Abstract

Scribe Therapeutics , a University of California, Berkeley, spin-off dedicated to designing new-and-improved CRISPR gene-editing systems, has raised $100 million in series B financing. Cofounder and CEO Benjamin Oakes says the money will help Scribe expand its 30-person team, build up its enzyme engineering platform, and accelerate development of gene-editing therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. As a PhD student in Jennifer Doudna’s and David Savage’s labs at Berkeley, Oakes designed new versions of Cas9, the DNA-cutting enzyme used in first-generation CRISPR gene editing. He created a version of Cas9 whose DNA cutting is allosterically controlled by small-molecule binding. And he used a protein-engineering trick called circular permutation to create a version of Cas9 whose DNA-cutting ability is kept inactive until protease enzymes cleave a chemical lock that lets Cas9 begin cutting. Doudna, Savage, Oakes, and Brett Stahl, a postdoc in Doudna’s lab, founded Scribe in 2018 to apply similar protein-engineering techniques