This Gene Editing Startup Raised $315 Million For A Next Generation Crispr Tool To Cure Rare Diseases

The gene editing technology Crispr may have been Nobel Prize-worthy, but Andrew Anzalone was convinced he could make it even better. Often likened to a pair of molecular scissors, it enables scientists to cut DNA and rewrite the code of life, such as turning off disease-causing genes. But the technology has some drawbacks—it breaks the DNA double stranded helix, which can lead to unwanted changes in other sections of the code. As a postdoctoral researcher in the Broad Institute lab of David Liu, Anzalone set out to build the equivalent of a Crispr Swiss Army knife—a multifunctional gene editing technology that can correct entire sequences of code all without breaking the double helix. "The idea was to really try to broaden the scope of what we can do with gene editing," Anzalone says of the invention called "prime editing."