New CRISPR company - Beam Therapeutics

[hopeful22]

Feng Zheng is starting a company called Beam Therapeutics that’s going to focus on even more precise CRISPR. Please see the link below. There are many more articles if you google Beam Therapeutics.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180514005400/en/Beam-Therapeutics-Founded-Gene-Editing-Pioneers-Create

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_Zhang

Company website - https://beamtx.com/

 

Edited May 16, 2018 by hopeful22

[Taintedgirl]

Cool but will they be doing any herpes research?

[hopeful22]

5 hours ago, Taintedgirl said:

Cool but will they be doing any herpes research?

@Taintedgirl

They have not stated what they will be working on yet. Don’t be discouraged by that, this company is very serious. They got $87 million in series A funding.  Feng Zhang who has been a huge part of CRISPR.  I’ve edited the original post that includes their website. 

I am not a scientist but maybe someone else can elaborate from what I quoted from Beams website below.  It seems that if they are able to more precisely edit the genome it’s better news for HSV. 

Beam Therapeutics website - Science section. 

Our groundbreaking CRISPR base editing technology allows us to make permanent, specific edits to single bases in DNA and RNA. Base editor therapeutics represent a new class of “precision genetic medicines,” combining precision targeting of the genome with precision control of editing outcomes.

[Taintedgirl]

They probably won’t have anything to do with hsv 

[Voyager2]

I didn't see any disease mentioned in their website either, but that's likely because Beam is just getting started. The website says they are still recruiting for various management positions. Let's hope the work of Beam, Excision, Editas, and others will soon lead to cures of HIV and HSV. But it's hard to predict when a Eureka moment will occur.   

[ManagingIllness]

On 5/16/2018 at 2:43 PM, hopeful22 said:

@Taintedgirl

They have not stated what they will be working on yet. Don’t be discouraged by that, this company is very serious. They got $87 million in series A funding.  Feng Zhang who has been a huge part of CRISPR.  I’ve edited the original post that includes their website. 

I am not a scientist but maybe someone else can elaborate from what I quoted from Beams website below.  It seems that if they are able to more precisely edit the genome it’s better news for HSV. 

Beam Therapeutics website - Science section. 

Our groundbreaking CRISPR base editing technology allows us to make permanent, specific edits to single bases in DNA and RNA. Base editor therapeutics represent a new class of “precision genetic medicines,” combining precision targeting of the genome with precision control of editing outcomes.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-03/ku-sc030218.php

Essentially, nucleotides are the letters in the DNA - they are also the N in DNA. They have to be paired as follows: A  with T, and C with G. 

There are many human genetic diseases that are the result of a mis-pairing of these nucleotides, such that we need to snip out one nucleotide. Consequently, the cell's innate DNA repair mechanisms will kick in (and hopefully provide the correct pairing).

Formerly, CRISPR could only be programmed to remove a chunk of DNA, and so it would have to remove at least one of these pairings per snip. 
The new method described in the link above moved beyond that limitation, allowing a single letter to be removed precisely.

In essence, this is as selective & fine as you can possibly get in editing DNA. 

[hopeful22]

9 hours ago, ManagingIllness said:

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-03/ku-sc030218.php

Essentially, nucleotides are the letters in the DNA - they are also the N in DNA. They have to be paired as follows: A  with T, and C with G. 

There are many human genetic diseases that are the result of a mis-pairing of these nucleotides, such that we need to snip out one nucleotide. Consequently, the cell's innate DNA repair mechanisms will kick in (and hopefully provide the correct pairing).

Formerly, CRISPR could only be programmed to remove a chunk of DNA, and so it would have to remove at least one of these pairings per snip. 
The new method described in the link above moved beyond that limitation, allowing a single letter to be removed precisely.

In essence, this is as selective & fine as you can possibly get in editing DNA. 

Very cool! Thank you for explaining. 

[Piyush]

above translation

 

 

We hope that they can pay attention to the disturbing disease of hsv. If there are strong friends, they can go and visit them. I believe that if there are a large number of people, they will be willing to research and develop. In the United States, 20% of people have hsv2. 90% of people in China carry hsv1, and about 30 million people carry hsv2. This market is very commercially valuable.

[Makeit]

I would guess Cancer will be the main target initially. CRISPR has previously been tried on 3 viruses including hsv so they are already thinking about it. This is very promising but still difficult to give a timeframe. HSV is especially difficult because it hides in neurons. Google  “ can CRISPR cure hsv?” I think article was from 2016.. I’m very hopeful!!

[35hope]

On 5/29/2018 at 2:31 AM, Voyager2 said:

I didn't see any disease mentioned in their website either, but that's likely because Beam is just getting started. The website says they are still recruiting for various management positions. Let's hope the work of Beam, Excision, Editas, and others will soon lead to cures of HIV and HSV. But it's hard to predict when a Eureka moment will occur.   

it says on their website they working with editas 

[brookeb300]

Crispr Gold sounds really cool

[floydmonk]

Whatever Editas Medicine has I can guarantee it’s more advanced than what Excision has developed.

Excision is using the ICP0 gene editing which only reduces replication by 60-90%. Editas publishes papers on the same findings, but went on to find other genes that could be edited to “eradicate” the virus. 

I know Excision is in animal trials now, with human trials expected in 2019-2020 with nanotechnology for delivery. But that product is based on ICP0 only.

Beam will likely be the one to take this to the next level, but will likely be a couple of years behind Excision at bringing a product to market.

[Cas9]

14 hours ago, floydmonk said:

Whatever Editas Medicine has I can guarantee it’s more advanced than what Excision has developed.

Excision is using the ICP0 gene editing which only reduces replication by 60-90%. Editas publishes papers on the same findings, but went on to find other genes that could be edited to “eradicate” the virus. 

I know Excision is in animal trials now, with human trials expected in 2019-2020 with nanotechnology for delivery. But that product is based on ICP0 only.

Beam will likely be the one to take this to the next level, but will likely be a couple of years behind Excision at bringing a product to market.

You guarantee it? Based on what? Have you studied both approaches to make this statement?

Excision is NOT using just the ICPO gene editing, they are using ICPO, ICP4, ICP27. From one of their research papers on their website, they say the following:

"Combined treatment of cells with CRISPR targeting ICP0 plus the immediate early viral proteins, ICP4 or ICP27, completely abrogated HSV-1 infection"

Here's the entire article:  https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/54ec3c_17b495ebfee84a7eaaa4fd51b9634db7.pdf

Edited July 7, 2018 by Cas9

[floydmonk]

Thanks for the additional info. I didn’t know Excision had already gotten so far. 

I guess we can hope that Editas/Beam have gone even further in their research, but I have nothing to confirm that other than timelines of press releases. 

Edited July 11, 2018 by floydmonk