Funding CRISPR: Understanding the role of government and philanthropic institutions in supporting academic research within the CRISPR innovation system

Abstract

Abstract CRISPR/Cas has the potential to revolutionize medicine, agriculture, and biology. Understanding the trajectory of CRISPR research, how it is influenced, and who pays for it is an essential research policy question. We use a combination of methods to map, via quantitative content analysis of CRISPR papers, the research funding profile of major government agencies and philanthropic organizations and the networks involved in supporting key stages of high-influence research, namely, basic biological research and technological development. The results of the content analysis show how the research supported by the main U.S. government agencies focuses both on the study of CRISPR as a biological phenomenon and on its technological development and use as a biomedical research tool. U.S. philanthropic organizations, with the exception of HHMI, tend, by contrast, to specialize in funding CRISPR as a genome editing technology. We present a model of cofunding networks at the two most prominent institutions for CRISPR/Cas research (the University of California system and the Broad/Harvard/MIT system) to illuminate how philanthropic organizations have articulated with government agencies to cofinance the discovery and development of CRISPR/Cas. Our results raise fundamental questions about the role of the state and the influence of philanthropy over the trajectory of transformative technologies.