Caribou Biosciences Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Caribou Biosciences’ CEO discusses CRISPR progress, future goals, and gender equality in biotech

Founded in 2011, Caribou Biosciences is a pioneer in the development of CRISPR genome editing technologies, a field honored with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020. Co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., one of the Nobel laureates, and CEO Rachel Haurwitz, and two other CRISPR pioneers, the company has raised over $800 million in funding, including significant investments from industry giants like Pfizer. In 2021, the company entered the clinic with their lead program and completed a successful $350 million IPO.

“Today, we’re laser focused on using Caribou’s next generation CRISPR technology, which we call chRDNA technology to advance a pipeline of wholly owned off the shelf CAR-T and CAR-NK cell therapies,” said Haurwitz in a recent interview at the JP Morgan Health Care conference.

CRISPR: From lab to clinic in about a decade

Rachel Haurwitz, Ph.D., CEO of Caribou Biosciences

Rachel Haurwitz,…

100 top cell and gene therapy companies to watch in 2023

[Image courtesy of ipopba/Adobe Stock]

The cell and gene therapy sector is poised to deliver a wave of new therapies that could potentially cure rare and common diseases. As many as 13 new cell or gene therapies could be approved for use in the U.S., Europe, or both by the end of 2023.

While manufacturing and regulatory challenges remain, the cell and gene therapy industry continues to offer significant therapeutic potential and commercial opportunities.

This year, we have beefed up our list of leading cell and gene therapy companies, doubling the number of organizations from 50 to 100.

In selecting the companies for this list, we weighed public companies’ degree of involvement in cell and gene therapy, including drug developers, equipment vendors and CDMOs specializing in the area. For private companies, we factored in their funding levels, pipeline and degree of history for the list.

B…

Caribou Biosciences announces positive CRISPR hybrid RNA-DNA data

Caribou Biosciences (NSDQ:CRBU) has announced the publication of data showing that its CRISPR hybrid RNA-DNA (chRDNA) guide technology supports better CRISPR associated protein 9 (Cas9) specificity compared with all-RNA guides. The Berkeley, California–based company’s technology thus enabled accuracy in intended genomic edits in cells while minimizing off-target events.

High Cas9 specificity is useful in the development of therapeutics.

In an article in Molecular Cell, report authors concluded that the findings “pave the way for utilizing customized chRDNAs in clinical applications.”

Steve Kanner

Caribou is developing allogeneic CAR-T cell therapies with multiple genome edits as potential therapies for hematologic malignancies. “By altering the position and number of DNA residues in our chRDNA guides, we readily achieve optimal on-target editing and minimize unintended off-target edits that m…