Bayer's $335 million investment in gene programming start-up CRISPR has been awarded a joint human test

A company that wants to make gene programming a reality has recently won the backing of the world's pharmaceutical giants.
Bayer, the German pharmaceutical company valued at $96 billion, will invest at least $300 million over the next five years in CRISPRTherapeutics to develop CRISPR-cas9 gene programming technology to treat diseases such as blood disease, blindness and congenital heart disease.
bayer became CRISPR's largest shareholder with $35 million. CRISPR-Cas9 is a tool for scientists to exchange healthy genes for specific genes with potential defects. So far, the technology has not been tested in humans (except for human embryos that cannot survive).
"It's entirely possible, it's only a matter of time," said Dr. Roger Novak, CEO and co-founder of CRISPR Thereapeutics. We know this will take time, and if we don't work together, the research and development process could take longer.
2014, CRISPRTherapeutics is co-founded by Novak, Shaun Foy and Emmanuelle Charpentier and has a research and development base in Cambridge.
October, CRISPR Thelpeutics completed a $105 million deal with biopharmaceutical company Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which Novak said would focus on licensing technology and developing drug uses, unlike Bayer's.
Novak further explains that the partnership with Bayer will allow the two companies to delve into diseases such as blindness and blood diseases, which Bayer is an expert on.
but CRISPR isn't the only company that wants to try to apply CRISPR technology to the human body. Another Cambridge CRISPR company, Editas, founded by CRISPR pioneers Jennifer Doudna and Feng Zhang, is trying to apply the technology to humans in 2017.
we're not a technology company," Novak says, "but we have the ability to apply gene translation technology to clinical medicine in the near future." Novak
said the company would take an orderly step forward.
he hopes the company will be able to apply gene programming technology to human cells by the end of 2017. Currently, much of CRISPR's work is to put the Cas9 protein and a guided RNA into a group of cells outside the body, which work together to remove and replace the wrong DNA with healthy DNA. (Medical Valley)