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GlaxoSmithKline taps UC’s CRISPR expertise to speed drug discovery

The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) today announced a five-year collaboration with UC Berkeley and UCSF to establish a laboratory where state-of-the-art CRISPR techniques will be used to explore how gene mutations cause disease, potentially yielding new technologies using CRISPR that would rapidly accelerate the discovery of new medicines.

The new Laboratory for Genomics Research (LGR) is the brainchild of Jennifer Doudna, a co-inventor of CRISPR technology, UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; Jonathan Weissman, a UCSF pioneer of CRISPR screening technology and an HHMI investigator; and Hal Barron, the Chief Scientific Officer and President for R&D at GSK.

With the recent explosion of information from human genetics, scientists need powerful tools to understand why small changes in a person’s genetic makeup can increase the risk of diseases, an area of science called functional genomics. The most powerful tool in functional genomics, CRISPR, allows this to be done at a scale once thought impossible. Through this research, scientists can discover and develop novel therapies that have a higher likelihood of becoming medicines.

Focus

CRISPR

Client

UC Berkeley

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