Bay­er jumps on board Mam­moth­'s ul­tra-small CRISPR tech with sights set first on the liv­er

Ger­man drug gi­ant Bay­er has looked to rein­vent it­self in re­cent years, mov­ing on from its past as a pri­mar­i­ly con­sumer health brand in­to one built around next-gen ther­a­pies. Now, Bay­er is tak­ing a fly­er on one of the chil­dren of CRISPR maven Jen­nifer Doud­na’s hal­lowed lab work­ing on tiny ver­sions of the gene edit­ing tech.

Bay­er will pay $40 mil­lion up­front and more than $1 bil­lion in po­ten­tial down­stream mile­stones for up to five in vi­vo gene edit­ing can­di­dates from Mam­moth Bio­sciences, a Doud­na lab spin­out de­vel­op­ing ul­tra-small en­zymes for eas­i­er pack­ag­ing and de­liv­ery in­to cells, the part­ners said Mon­day.

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