Watchmaker Licenses CRISPR IP from Caribou
Watchmaker Genomics has licensed CRISPR-Cas9 intellectual property from Caribou Biosciences. The non-exclusive agreement is intended to help Watchmaker develop products that increase the throughput and reduce the per-sample cost of next-generation sequencing.
- Caribou Biosciences, co-founded by Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna, holds foundational patents for CRISPR-Cas9 technology. The company leverages this intellectual property by licensing it to partners in various market sectors and developing its own CRISPR-based therapies. - Watchmaker Genomics is applying the licensed CRISPR-Cas9 technology in a novel way that is not for gene editing. Instead, they are using it as a tool to bind to DNA libraries for sequencing, which helps to standardize the amount of library material without extensive quantification and dilution, a common bottleneck in the workflow. - This new method aims to solve the problem of "library normalization" in next-generation sequencing (NGS), a process that can be time-consuming and variable. By making normalization faster and more predictable, Watchmaker intends to better support high-throughput automated sequencing. - The cost of sequencing a whole human genome has dramatically decreased over the years, from billions of dollars for the Human Genome Project to as low as $100-$200 with the latest high-throughput systems. This agreement aims to further reduce costs on a per-sample basis. - Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a high-throughput technology that allows for the rapid sequencing of millions of DNA fragments at the same time. CRISPR-Cas9 technology can be used with NGS to verify the accuracy of gene edits, including identifying any unintended "off-target" effects. - Watchmaker Genomics, founded in 2018, specializes in creating high-performance enzymes and kits for NGS library preparation, synthetic biology, and molecular diagnostics. The company has raised a total of $48.3 million in funding. - Caribou Biosciences is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that is developing its own "off-the-shelf" CAR-T and CAR-NK cell therapies using its next-generation CRISPR platform called chRDNA (CRISPR hybrid RNA-DNA). - The intellectual property licensed by Watchmaker is part of a foundational CRISPR-Cas9 patent portfolio managed through a global agreement between Caribou, CRISPR Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics, ERS Genomics, and the University of California, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier.
