Danaher Partners with IGI, Doudna, & Urnov, on Beacon for CRISPR Cures

The future of CRISPR-based therapies received a windfall this week with the launch of the Danaher-IGI Beacon for CRISPR Cures. The goal of the center is to use CRISPR-based gene editing to permanently address hundreds of diseases with a unified research, development, and regulatory approach. The Beacon for CRISPR Cures plans to do this by developing platform approaches that can be easily modified to develop gene-editing medicines for hundreds of devastating illnesses. The model aims to dramatically reduce preclinical and clinical development time and expense for investigational rare disease therapies that currently struggle to attract funding.

The center brings together a triple-threat of resources, from academia and industry, with the hope of making a tectonic shift in the field of CRISPR-based cures. The first of the three comes from industry. Danaher consists of many (more than 15) diverse businesses: Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT), Cytiva, Molecular Devices, Leica, Beckman Coulter, and Aldevron, to name a few. Danaher will make available an extensive collection of technologies and solutions for the manufacturing of CRISPR-based therapies and will also work to develop new technologies and...