Text | Jiao Bowen
It is reported that “Weiguang Gene” announced the completion of an angel round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan. This round of financing was led by Xingze Capital, a professional investment institution in the field of life sciences. The funds raised will be mainly used for the rapid advancement of the company’s drug pipeline and new gene editing platform. ‘s research and development.
Weiguang Gene was established in September 2021. With the core protein evolution and gene editing platform as the fulcrum, it is committed to the industrialization of new gene editing technologies such as base editing. The company’s team has deep accumulation in the research fields of gene editing, protein science, aging, and rare diseases. signal path.
In recent years, novel therapies based on gene editing have made significant research progress in the research and treatment of various diseases including cancer, blood diseases, and genetic diseases, and gradually applied from basic research to clinical practice. Gene editing refers to a genetic engineering technique that inserts, deletes, modifies or replaces DNA in specific locations in the genome of a living organism. Current gene editing technologies include gene editing by artificial nucleases, including zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and CRISPR-Cas9.
Among them, CRISPR-Cas9 technology was also selected by Science as an important technological breakthrough in 2015. In just a few years, it has become the most mainstream gene editing tool and a disruptive technology in the field of life sciences today. Well-known Chinese scholars Zhang Feng and Professor Liu Ruqian have made major breakthroughs in gene editing technology, and established Beam Therapeutics with J. Keith Joung in 2018, dedicated to creating a new type of precision gene through its proprietary single-base editing technology drug.
Professor Song Yangzhou, the founder of Microlight Gene, once served as the dean of the School of Life Sciences in a well-known university, the first batch of introduced talents in China, and the chief scientist of the national key research and development project. He has made original contributions to the research in the field of molecular cytology, and the research on the mechanism of human cell telomere regulation and the proteomics and function of embryonic stem cells is at the forefront of related fields at home and abroad; For the first time, the mutated gene of β-thalassemia was corrected by genetic modification at the embryonic level. Professor Song Yangzhou’s team found that the traditional CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology in human early embryos has off-target effects, embryo mosaicism, low homologous recombination efficiency, and the use of endogenous homologous sequences as recombination. Templates, etc.
The company’s product pipelines all use new gene editing tools, leading the world in terms of safety and treatment efficiency. Multiple product pipelines are advancing preclinical work synchronously, quickly and effectively, and their progress ranks at the forefront of the industry, and many of these pipelines are globally scarce. , the first pipeline is expected to submit a clinical IND application in 2023.
According to related industry reports, Guanguo MIT has the largest number of gene editing-related patents, with 207. The number of related patents of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is 196, ranking second. The number of related patents of Harvard University in the United States ranks third with 192. In vitro gene editing therapy has entered the clinic in the research of cancer, SCD, HIV and other indications.
At present, Chinese gene editing tool companies include Huida Gene, Boya Jiyin, Kerui Gene, Weiyuan Gene, etc.
Editor: Hai Ruojing
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