Fundraisings and IPOs

The funding will allow CRISPR Therapeutics to translate its technology into important new gene medicines that have the potential to cure serious genetic diseases at the molecular level. Cas9 is an endonuclease that can be easily programmed with RNA to cut DNA at targeted sites within the genome, enabling the deletion, insertion or correction of target genes with surgical precision. It allows scientists and clinicians to mutate genes of interest and to correct specific target genes, to tackle both recessive and dominant genetic diseases. CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing offers significant advantages over traditional gene therapy approaches, which to date have only been useful in correcting some recessive genetic disorders. The technology offers the potential to cure many human genetic diseases. Dr Emmanuelle Charpentier, one of CRISPR Therapeutics’ scientific founders, co-invented the CRISPR-Cas9 technology in 2012. CRISPR Therapeutics’ scientific founders are: Dr Daniel Anderson, the Sam Goldblith Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an intramural member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; Dr Emmanuelle Charpentier, a professor at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and Hannover Medical School, Germany and the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine at Umeå University, Sweden, who holds an Alexander von Humboldt professorship for research in Germany;  Dr Chad Cowan, an associate professor at Harvard University in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, and at Massachusetts General Hospital, with appointments in the Center for Regenerative Medicine, the Cardiovascular Research Center and the Center for Human Genetics Research; Dr Craig Mello, a Nobel prize-winning investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine, and co-director of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Dr Matthew Porteus, an associate professor of pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics; Divisions of Hematology/Oncology and Human Gene Therapy, at Stanford School of Medicine