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 The academic and commercial tie-ups will allow British-based
AstraZeneca to use so-called CRISPR technology across its entire
drug discovery platform in areas such as oncology, cardiovascular,
respiratory and immune system medicine.
CRISPR, which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short
palindromic repeats, allows scientists to edit the genes of selected
cells accurately and efficiently. It has created excitement since
emerging two years ago and is already being tipped for a Nobel
Prize.
The collaborations with Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,
the Innovative Genomics Initiative in California, the Broad
Institute and Whitehead Institute in Massachusetts, and Thermo
Fisher Scientific build on an in-house CRISPR programme at
AstraZeneca that has been running for over a year.
Other drugmakers, keen to exploit the potential of a powerful new
scientific tool, are also forming alliances.
Earlier this month Switzerland's Novartis struck deals with Intellia
Therapeutics and Caribou Biosciences, two unlisted U.S. biotech
companies that have been set up to take advantage of CRISPR.
While certain existing techniques already allow scientists to add
genes to cells, CRISPR lets them make changes in specific genes far
faster and in a much more precise way. It is also much easier to
handle in the laboratory.
The technique is based on a naturally occurring system that bacteria
use to defend themselves against viral infection and incorporates
enzymatic "scissors" that cut DNA in the cell nucleus.
It is already being used by academic researchers seeking to
understand how cells work and the hope is that it will now help in
the design of improved drugs.
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AstraZeneca believes the technology will let it identify and
validate new drug targets more quickly, accelerating the drug
development process. It should also reduce the failure rate for
experimental compounds as they move from preclinical tests into
clinical trials, making drug research more cost-effective.
"CRISPR is a simple yet powerful tool that enables us to manipulate
genes of potential importance in disease pathways and examine the
impact of these modifications in a highly precise way," said Mene
Pangalos, AstraZeneca's head of innovative medicines and early
development.
No financial details of the collaborations were disclosed but
AstraZeneca said it would share cell lines and compounds with its
partners, based on an "open innovation" research model. Neither side
will own any targets identified.
(Editing by David Holmes and Keith Weir)
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