Date: 2018-09-13
Type of information: Licensing agreement
Compound: CRISPR-mediated gene activation
Company: Fate Therapeutics (USA - CA) J. David Gladstone Institutes (USA - CA)
Therapeutic area: Technology - Services
Type agreement: licensing
Action mechanism: gene editing technology
Disease:
Details:
- • On Septembre 13, 2018, Fate Therapeutics announced the company has exclusively licensed intellectual property from the J. David Gladstone Institutes that covers the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) using CRISPR-mediated gene activation. This new approach for inducing pluripotency uses CRISPR to directly target a specific location of the genome and activate endogenous gene expression, and does not rely on established methods of cellular reprogramming that require the transduction of multiple transcription factors. The discovery was made by a team of scientists led by Sheng Ding, Ph.D., a senior investigator at Gladstone and a scientific founder of Fate Therapeutics.
- While CRISPR is a powerful tool that can precisely edit the genome by targeting a unique sequence of DNA, Dr. Ding repurposed CRISPR to enable target gene activation, allowing regulation of endogenous gene expression. His research team showed that targeting a single location of the genome using CRISPR genome activation could trigger iPSC generation. The findings were published in January 2018 in the journal Cell Stem Cell in an article entitled “CRISPR-Based Chromatin Remodeling of the Endogenous Oct4 or Sox2 Locus Enables Reprogramming to Pluripotency.”
- Fate Therapeutics is using clonal master iPSC lines to overcome the complexity, heterogeneity and substantial costs associated with sourcing cells from a patient or an allogeneic donor. Instead, iPSC-derived cell products can be consistently and repeatedly mass produced and delivered in an off-the-shelf manner, significantly reducing the cost of, and time to, patient treatment.
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