Basecamp Research Unveils AI for Programmable Gene Insertion
Basecamp Research, backed by NVIDIA, has launched new AI models for programmable gene insertion. The company reports a 97% success rate in laboratory tests for inserting antimicrobial peptides, a development with potential applications in viral vector engineering and therapeutic design.
- The AI models, part of a family called EDEN (Environmentally-Derived Evolutionary Network), were developed in collaboration with NVIDIA and are trained on Basecamp's proprietary genomics dataset, which is purported to be the largest of its kind. The training data includes 10 billion novel genes from over one million new species, collected through partnerships in 28 countries. - Basecamp Research's Chief Scientific Officer, John Finn, previously held scientific leadership roles at Intellia Therapeutics and Tome Biosciences, bringing experience in gene editing and delivery platforms to the company. The company has also engaged in a multi-year collaboration with the lab of David Liu, a prominent gene editing researcher at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, to develop new "programmable" genetic medicines. - The company's AI-Programmable Gene Insertion (aiPGI™) platform is designed to overcome the limitations of CRISPR-based approaches, which are typically restricted to smaller genetic edits. This technology enables the insertion of large therapeutic DNA sequences at precise locations in the human genome without causing double-strand breaks, a key challenge in viral vector-based gene therapies. - In laboratory tests, the EDEN models have already demonstrated the ability to insert genes at over 10,000 disease-related locations in the human genome. One specific application involved inserting cancer-fighting DNA into primary human T-cells at novel "safe-harbour" sites, resulting in CAR-T cells that achieved over 90% tumor-cell clearance in lab assays. - The AI models have demonstrated versatility beyond gene insertion, having also been used to design novel antimicrobial peptides. These peptides are seen as a potential alternative to conventional antibiotics and could be used to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria. - Basecamp Research has raised approximately $85 million to date, including a $60 million Series B round led by Singular. NVIDIA's venture capital arm, NVentures, also invested in a pre-Series C round, solidifying the technical collaboration between the two companies.
