Ger­man biotech launch­es with ‘seam­less’ gene edit­ing plat­form built on evolv­ing en­zymes

Seam­less Ther­a­peu­tics has launched with €11.8 mil­lion (rough­ly $12.5 mil­lion) in seed fund­ing to build out a gene edit­ing plat­form.

As more and more gene edit­ing tech­niques are be­ing de­vel­oped — start­ing with CRISPR/Cas9 to base and prime edit­ing, and more re­cent­ly, PASTE — Seam­less is try­ing to evolve, lit­er­al­ly, an ap­proach that dates back decades.

The Dres­den, Ger­many-based start­up is de­vel­op­ing so-called “de­sign­er re­com­bi­nas­es” that can po­ten­tial­ly ed­it large chunks of genes. Re­com­bi­nas­es are en­zymes that can ex­cise, in­vert, or even in­sert a DNA se­quence, but typ­i­cal­ly they on­ly work via very spe­cif­ic tar­get se­quences. How­ev­er, by con­tin­u­ous­ly evolv­ing these re­com­bi­nas­es, Seam­less is try­ing to de­vel­op re­com­bi­nas­es that work at the se­quences it wants — those that are found in hu­man genes.

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