Take­da eyes path­way to nat­ur­al killer ther­a­pies, tee­ing up $100M to part­ner with KSQ for its CRISPR-screened mol­e­cules

The po­ten­tial ap­pli­ca­tions for CRISPR/Cas9 con­tin­ue to grow as drug­mak­ers look for nov­el ways to use the pow­er­ful gene edit­ing plat­form to re­work drug dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment. Japan­ese drug­mak­er Take­da has dab­bled on the gene edit­ing front, and now it’s pair­ing up with a biotech us­ing CRISPR screen­ing to laser in on on­col­o­gy can­di­dates.

Take­da will shell out $100 mil­lion in up­front cash and pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment mile­stones to part­ner with Boston-area biotech KSQ Ther­a­peu­tics and its CRISPR-screened nat­ur­al killer cell ther­a­pies. The pact will im­me­di­ate­ly in­clude two T cell pro­grams al­ready iden­ti­fied and val­i­dat­ed, KSQ said, with the op­tion to ex­pand in­to two oth­er tar­get ar­eas.

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