Prime editing deal flurry to nail down patent rights
By Carrie Arnold,
Nature Biotechnology
| 04. 17. 2024
Tome Biosciences came out of stealth mode on 12 December with a haul of over $200 million to develop the company’s gene editing platform. Tome’s first order of business was to snap up Replace Therapeutics to expand its toolkit to one equipped to make gene edits in DNA sequences big and small.
Tome’s own genomic technology, mediated by an integrase, is well suited to large DNA up to tens of thousands of kilobases long. Replace’s CRISPR–Cas9 ligase-mediated platform, by contrast, is adept at inserting and deleting small DNA sequences of 10–100 base pairs. Having both of these technologies in its pocket, says Tome CEO Rahul Kakkar, means that the company can potentially replace an entire gene with a wild-type version rather than correct a defective version, and without requiring double-stranded breaks in DNA.
The merger, worth $65 million up front and potentially up to $185 million total for Replace, is one of the largest acquisitions in the booming prime editing field. Although Kakkar says that the acquisition was driven not by patent coverage but to expand Tome’s gene editing toolkit...
Related Articles
By Mary Annette Pember, ICT News [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 04.18.2025
The sight of a room full of human cadavers can be off-putting for some, but not for Haley Omeasoo.
In fact, Omeasoo’s comfort level and lack of squeamishness convinced her to pursue studies in forensics and how DNA can be...
Gray wolf by Jessica Eirich via Unsplash
“I’m not a scarcity guy, I’m an abundance guy”
– Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm, The New Yorker, 4/14/25
Even the most casual consumers of news will have seen the run of recent headlines featuring the company Colossal Biosciences. On March 4, they announced with great fanfare the world’s first-ever woolly mice, as a first step toward creating a woolly mammoth. Then they topped that on April 7 by unveiling one...
By Katrina Northrop, The Washington Post | 04.06.2025
photo via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 3.0
China's most infamous scientist is attempting a comeback. He Jiankui, who went to jail for three years after claiming he had created the world's first genetically altered babies, says he remains...
By Anumita Kaur [cites CGS’ Katie Hasson], The Washington Post | 03.25.2025
Genetic information company 23andMe has said that it is headed to bankruptcy court, raising questions for what happens to the DNA shared by millions of people with the company via saliva test kits.
Sunday’s announcement clears the way for a new...