British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca has entered four research collaborations to use clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) technology for genome editing across its discovery platform in key therapeutic areas.
CRISPR is a genome-editing tool, which helps scientists to make changes in specific genes, and it has two components, including a homing device to a specific section of DNA (guide-RNA) and enzymatic scissors that cut DNA (Cas9 nuclease).
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The technology will help the company to identify and validate new drug targets in preclinical models, which closely resemble human diseases.
AstraZeneca innovative medicines and early development executive vice-president Dr Mene Pangalos said: "CRISPR is a simple yet powerful tool that enables us to manipulate genes of potential importance in disease pathways and examine the impact of these modifications in a highly precise way."
Under the deal with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, AstraZeneca will concentrate on deleting specific genes relevant to cancer, cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, as well as regenerative medicine to understand their precise role in these conditions.
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The company will provide cell lines, which can be targeted using the Sanger Institute’s collection of genome-wide CRISPR guide-RNA libraries to generate populations of cells where defined genes are switched off.
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By GlobalDataThe Innovative Genomics Initiative (IGI) is a joint venture between the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco, which will concentrate on either inhibiting (CRISPRi) or activating (CRISPRa) genes to understand their role in disease pathology.
AstraZeneca will work with IGI to identify and validate gene targets relevant to cancer, cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and regenerative medicine to understand their precise role in these conditions.
Under the terms of the deal with Thermo Fisher Scientific, AstraZeneca will secure RNA-guide libraries that target individual known human genes and gene families.
As part of the collaboration with the Broad Institute and Whitehead Institute, AstraZeneca will assess a genome-wide CRISPR library against a panel of cancer cell lines with a view to identifying new targets for cancer drug discovery.
The firm’s in-house programme is currently adapting CRISPR technology to streamline and accelerate the production of cell lines and translational models that mimic complex genomic and disease-relevant scenarios, in addition to the new collaborations.
Image: AstraZeneca site, Loughborough. Photo: courtesy of Chris J Dixon.
