In a first for CRISPR — a field that’s seen quite a few historic moves in the past couple of years — scientists have slashed cholesterol and lipid levels in monkeys using a technique known as base editing, generating crucial proof-of-concept for both the biotech behind the experiment and a key partner.

Verve Therapeutics designed two similar experiments to test whether they can reproduce protective mutations in a pair of genes using an adenine base editor, which precisely alters a chosen A to a G in the genome. CEO and co-founder Sekar Kathiresan presented the results at a virtual keynote for the International Society for Stem Cell Research over the weekend.

Allergan’s neurology-focused R&D pact with Sosei Heptares hasn’t been all roses, but the BD team at AbbVie found enough to like about the G protein-coupled receptor specialist’s discovery engine to kick off a new collaboration. The goal? Finding small molecules targeting inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

The partnership starts small, with $32 million in upfront and near-term milestones plus potential option, development and commercial payments of up to $377 million. But if AbbVie chooses to execute on all four targets, the total deal value could grow to a size “in a similar ballpark” to the billion-dollar pacts with Genentech and Takeda, a Sosei spokesperson told Reuters.

Big name partnerships were critical for Nimbus Therapeutics’ first decade. With a head-turning $1.2 billion — $600 million of which were paid within months — deal from Gilead and a returning customer in Celgene, the biotech emerged as a prolific pioneer of computational chemistry and structure-based drug discovery while the industry went through a seismic shift in its thinking of the role that algorithms play in engineering new therapies.

Among all the limitations of using an adeno-associated virus as a vector to deliver a gene — still the most established modality in gene therapy given years of trial and error and finally success — the presence of neutralizing antibodies, whether pre-existing or induced, looms large.

“When I think about the immune responses in AAV, I try to sort of layer them,” Federico Mingozzi, the CSO at Spark Therapeutics, told Endpoints News. “The antibody is the first layer. It’s the first block that you find when you’re trying to do gene transfer.”

A team at the University of California San Diego that’s been facilitating studies on the frontlines of Covid-19 has received a $54.7 million grant from the NIH to bind basic research with clinical care even more tightly together.

Every year the 1,000 faculty and staff at the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute partner with UCSD Health to help run 250 trials — including recent trials investigating “an antiviral drug, an arthritis drug and a medication for hypertension” as treatments for the coronavirus infection.

It took 23 years from the isolation of the gene for cystic fibrosis to the approval of the first drug to target it, and another 7 for a drug that could treat the vast majority of CF patients. Third Rock Venture’s latest startup thinks they can build similar drugs a whole lot faster.

MOMA Therapeutics has raised $86 million to investigate and drug a class of enzymes known as molecular machines. These proteins include everything from enzymes involved in DNA repair to the transport proteins that go awry in cystic fibrosis — over 400 different types, by MOMA’s count. And yet, MOMA contends, they have been overlooked to date, with researchers both failing to understand them as a cohesive group and failing to employ systematic ways of finding and drugging them.