Pharmaceutical giant Bayer is making a joint venture with Swiss CRISPR Therapeutics to jump on the genome editing industry. Bayer has invested $335 million in the collaboration to use CRISPR/Cas9 technology, with means to find cures for genetic diseases.
Bayer is Looking to Cure Blood Disorders, Blindness and Congenital Heart Disease
The technology will be optimized to put heavy research into genetic diseases and develop different therapeutics to treat them. Through Bayern’s protein engineering and CRISPR’s genome-editing technology and heavy research and development, both parties hope to commercialize treatments to cure these diseases and bring them to the public.
Millions of people around the world will benefit from having access to new treatments to these diseases, which plague many. This can help even reduce risks of mothers passing down genetic diseases to their children, or help develop medicines that can shut down genes for these terrible sicknesses.
CRISPR Therapeutics and Bayer Will Erase These Diseases
Their focus is on curing blood disorders, congenital heart disease, and blindness. Bayer is making a new life-science unit for this venture. $300 million of this investment is going towards research and development, and the remaining $35 million will be Bayer’s stake in CRISPR Therapeutics.
CRISPR Therapeutics has had notorious breakthroughs with genome-editing technology. The fact that Bayer has jumped and joined hands with them goes to show that CRISPR technology is not kidding around, it means serious business. We can hope for great things to come out of this partnership in the near future.
Both Sides Get Some Serious Perks
CRISPR is highly benefited from this venture. They get to keep 50% ownership of high-risk and high-reward areas of blood disorders, congenital heart diseases, and blindness. They also get full access to target delivery technology and any IP development by the JV. They intend to keep this information to support their own goals in terms of strategic disease areas.
The event that prompted this venture was Bayer’s new Life Science Center, which operates as a ‘strategic innovation unit’. It is meant to facilitate partnerships with other biotech entrepreneurs. CRISPR has the most competitive gene-editing technology on the market, so it’s only natural that a giant like Bayer would seek it out as a partner.
This New Bayer-CRISPR Venture Has No Name Yet
Axe Bouchon will be the CEO of this new venture company. Bouchon, who is head of the Bayer Life Science Center, has expressed that the company is very impressed with CRISPR’s technology and that it promises to bring great things to the medical treatment community. The new company will be headquartered in London, UK, and it will have its operations in Cambridge, MA. What Changes Will this Partnership Bring?
What Changes Will this Partnership Bring?
First of all, this partnership will make genome-editing technology even more popular. This has been a trend in the scientific community, alongside molecular therapy. It has even brought to life projects like 23andMe. Whether or not Bayer will bring about something to release to the mass public or if they develop their own kind of treatment and equipment, it will shed new light in this great field fo medicine.
This joint venture will most likely be very secretive. Bayer is trusted worldwide to be a provider of cures, so it’s possible they will take all the time necessary to develop the perfect treatments and cures for these diseases. Congenital heart disease alone affects millions all over the world, and be it in a small or large scale, blindness is the same way. New research could be a serious game changer, and that is exactly what these two companies are going for.
