The CRISPR technology represents one of the highest revolutions of the last decade and a powerful technique for genome editing in every single organism and any field of biological science. From bacteria to humans, including plants and animals. From basic research science to the most advance therapeutic applications. CRISPR technology has been democratized and almost any lab in the world is able to perform genome editing using public available CRISPR tools that scientist have developed and deposited in nonprofit repository collections like AddGene (www.addgene.org).
However, the democratization of CRISPR and the availability of those tools is only for research purpose and academia applications, not for profit. Most of the heroes of CRISPR, the scientists involved in developing the technology, want to get profit of their contribution and possible applications of CRISPR. This has lead to a huge number of patents applications from the different universities, national labs and companies, and of course, to the CRISPR battle, that is the biggest legal battle for a patent in molecular biology (not discuss here). Thereof, most of those scientists, currently working in academia, developed their own companies that began as a startup but now a days are big industries. Yes, CRISPR is a huge business.
The wide variety of CRISPR applications has lead to many new biotech companies that will apply CRISPR to the most promising solutions to improve human health, food safety and agriculture production. Indeed, the human therapeutic applications are based on (i) developing new antimicrobials against human pathogens, (ii) human genome editing therapies to avoid genetic diseases and (iii) human genome editing in immune cells to attack cancer cells (CAR-T). CRISPR technology will represent one step forward in precision medicine, and even in personalized medicine. The main companies using CRISPR to improve human health are:
- Locus Biosciences: http://www.locus-bio.com
- Caribou Biosciences: http://cariboubio.com
- Intellia Therapeutics: https://www.intelliatx.com
- Eligo Bioscience: https://eligo-bioscience.com
- Editas Medicine: http://www.editasmedicine.com
- CRISPR Therapeutics: http://crisprtx.com
- Precision Biosciences: http://precisionbiosciences.com
- Syntheg: http://www.synthego.com
- eGenesis Bio: https://www.egenesisbio.com
- Poseida Therapeutics: http://poseida.com
- Agenovir: https://www.agenovir.com
- Exonics Therapeutics: http://exonicstx.com
Another big market for CRISPR technology is the agriculture area, where CRISPR tools are being develop to efficiently modify crops, either to prevent plant diseases, to increase crops production or to enhance crops adaptation to environmental conditions. Most of the big agriculture companies have lunch there own CRISPR projects and new startups were also funded:
- AgBiome: http://agbiome.com
- Syngenta: https://www.syngenta.com
- Pioneer: www.pioneer.com
- Cellectis: https://www.cellectis.com
- Cibus: https://www.cibus.com
- Monsanto: https://www.monsanto.com