Ex­clu­sive: Big-name aca­d­e­mics and in­vestors are qui­et­ly prepar­ing a slate of new (epi)genome edit­ing com­pa­nies

A few weeks af­ter Jen­nifer Doud­na in­tro­duced CRISPR/Cas9 genome edit­ing to the world, one of her old stu­dents de­cid­ed to take the cen­tral part of the bi­ol­o­gy-al­ter­ing in­ven­tion and kill it.

CRISPR/Cas9, as the name im­plies, is a two-part sys­tem: a string of let­ters called a guide RNA, that says where to cut the DNA. And an en­zyme, Cas9, that does the cut­ting. Of­ten com­pared to mol­e­c­u­lar scis­sors, it was the first sys­tem that al­lowed re­searchers to cut DNA with ease and pre­ci­sion, promis­ing po­ten­tial cures for ge­net­ic dis­eases such as sick­le cell and cys­tic fi­bro­sis.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER