Last month in Silicon Valley, scientists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier wore black dresses and received the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. They won the award for developing the powerful and widely applicable genome editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR is hailed as the biggest breakthrough in biotechnology so far this century.
The author also reported on this news last month. At that time, I also had questions in my mind as to why Zhang Feng, the well-known pioneer of CRISPR/Cas9 technology, did not win the award from the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute. Many readers have the same question.
On April 15 this year, the Broad Institute successfully applied for a patent for CRISPR-Cas9 technology. Dr. Zhang Feng is the inventor of the patent, which allows him and his institute to control almost all aspects related to CRISPR. Relevant important commercial uses.
Then here comes the problem! Why did CRISPR patents and scientific breakthrough awards fall into different hands?
Patent application form for CRISPR-Cas9 technology
The focus of the current debate is, who invented what and when? That involved three heavily funded startups, six universities and thousands of pages of legal documents. One such company is CRISPR Therapeutics, a Swiss drug development company co-founded by Emmanuelle Charpentier. Rodger Novak, the current CEO of CRISPR Therapeutics, said: "Intellectual property rights are quite complex in this field, and everyone knows that it is full of contradictions."
Scientists believe that CRISPR may have been around since the 1970s. The most important genetic engineering technology that has emerged since the beginning of the biotechnology era. The CRISPR system has the dual function of searching and replacing DNA, allowing scientists to easily change the function of DNA by replacing bases. In the past few months, scientists have demonstrated that using CRISPR can treat muscle wasting, rare liver diseases in mice, and make human cells immune to HIV, among other amazing things.
Although no CRISPR-related drugs currently exist, if CRISPR is indeed as powerful as scientists predict, commercial control of it will be worth billions of dollars. Patent control is very important for startups. Several companies related to CRISPR have quickly raised more than $80 million in funding, with the goal of allowing CRISPR to cure devastating diseases as quickly as possible. The companies expect to have clinical trials ready in less than three years.
Who should get the CRISPR patent?
Zhang Feng
Zhang Feng founded Editas Medicine with $43 million in venture capital. It is worth mentioning that Editas Medicine does not fully occupy CRISPR technology. This is because Jennifer Doudna, a structural biologist at the University of California, who received one of the Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences, is also one of the co-founders of Editas Medicine. Since Zhang Feng's patent application was successful, she has severed ties with the company and licensed her intellectual property (patent pending) to Intellia Therapeutics, a startup company announced last month.
To further complicate matters, another winner, Emmanuelle Charpentier, sold her rights in the same patent to CRISPR Therapeutics.
In an email interview, Jennifer Doudna stated that she is no longer involved in any way with Editas Medicine. But she declined to answer further questions about the patent.
Few researchers want to get involved in the patent battle, fearing that anything they say could later be used against them by the patent holders.
Emmanuelle Charpentier said: "The emergence of CRISPR has brought a lot of excitement, but also a lot of pressure. What should we continue to do, what kind of company should we build? It is very confusing for insiders, and it is certainly more confusing for outsiders. ”
For academic laboratories, they are not waiting for the patent dispute to be resolved as soon as possible. On the contrary, they are racing to organize strong teams to further improve gene editing technology. For example, at Harvard Medical School, top genomics expert George Church’s team has 30 people involved in research.
Zhang Feng said: “With the continuous emergence of new research results, the importance of any patent is becoming increasingly unclear. Although patents are important, I really don’t value patents. Any technology will eventually All forms change people’s lives.”
What is the discovery process of CRISPR/Cas?
CRISPR/Cas is a natural immune system found in most bacteria and archaea that can be used to fight invading viruses and foreign DNA. In 2012, a team led by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier published a pivotal article that revealed how the natural immune system can be turned into an editing tool. At least, any DNA strand can be cut in a test tube.
Next, scientists need to prove whether this magical editing tool can be applied to the genome of human cells. In January 2013, Zhang Feng from the George Church Laboratory of Harvard University and the Broad Institute published an article confirming that the answer to the above question is yes. Jennifer Doudna published her own results a few weeks later.
Subsequently, scientists realized that CRISPR might become a very flexible tool for rewriting DNA and be used to treat a variety of genetic diseases, such as hemophilia, rare metabolic diseases and even neurodegenerative diseases.
Venture capital groups quickly began to gather the key scientists behind CRISPR, take possession of the patents, and establish companies. Emmanuelle Charpentier founded CRISPR Therapeutics in Europe. Jennifer Doudna previously co-founded Editas Medicine with Zhang Feng***. After leaving Editas Medicine, she now founded a small company, Caribou Biosciences.