As­traZeneca beefs up cell ther­a­py tool kit with gene edit­ing deal

As­traZeneca is li­cens­ing Revvi­ty’s gene-edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy in a non-ex­clu­sive agree­ment for an undis­closed amount in or­der to cre­ate cell ther­a­pies for the treat­ment of can­cer and im­mune-me­di­at­ed dis­eases, Revvi­ty said Thurs­day.

As­traZeneca is li­cens­ing the tech­nol­o­gy un­der­ly­ing Revvi­ty’s base edit­ing sys­tem, dubbed Pin-point. It’s de­signed to ed­it genes “with­out un­in­tend­ed im­pact on cell vi­a­bil­i­ty or func­tion­al­i­ty.” Revvi­ty says that un­like CRISPR, which cre­ates dou­ble-strand­ed DNA breaks, their edit­ing sys­tem us­es a mod­i­fied Cas en­zyme that on­ly “nicks” one strand of the DNA.

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