Money Behind First CRISPR Test? It’s from Internet Billionaire Sean Parker
By Antonio Regalado,
MIT Technology Review
| 06. 20. 2016
The first proposed test of CRISPR gene-editing technology in human beings is being funded by Internet billionaire Sean Parker, MIT Technology Review has learned.
The novel cancer treatment, initially disclosed last week, is being reviewed Tuesday by a federal advisory panel in Washington, D.C., and could become the first clinical trial involving CRISPR, the red-hot gene modification technology.
Now we can report that Parker, a 36-year-old whose net worth is estimated at $2.4 billion, is financing the study.
Continue reading on MIT Technology Review
Image via Flickr/JD Lasica
Related Articles
By Jennifer Denbow, Guest Contributor
| 10.29.2026
Almost every day I am reminded that we are in the midst of a fertility panic. Whether it’s the Vice President exhorting Americans to have more babies or The New York Times running yet another story about the fertility cliff, fear about falling fertility rates is everywhere. While centrally concerned with declining rates of childbearing, Anna Louie Sussman’s new book, Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty, is a welcome antidote to the panic.
Sussman has written...
By Anna Louie Sussman, The New Republic | 10.26.2026
There’s a certain kind of novel that’s not quite apocalyptic enough to be science fiction, but just far-fetched enough to be speculative. No one is from outer space; society has not yet been carved up into a hierarchy of groups...
By Ariana Aspuru and Noel King, Vox | 10.14.2026
For some couples, surrogacy is a miracle: an opportunity to have a child even if they’re unable to conceive one naturally. But it’s also big business. Not only is surrogacy expensive — think six figures — but it’s also largely...
By Sonia Suter and Naomi Cahn, The Conversation | 10.09.2026