Jennifer Doudna

• Published in: Nature reviews. Drug discovery Vol. 19; no. 6; pp. 380 - 381
• Main Author: Mullard, Asher
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.06.2020; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: An Audience With; Biomedicine; Biotechnology; Cancer Research; CRISPR; Doudna, Jennifer; Drug discovery; Laboratories; Medicinal Chemistry; Molecular Medicine; Pharmacology/Toxicology; R&D; Research & development; United States > US
• ISSN: 1474-1776; 1474-1784
• DOI: 10.1038/d41573-020-00095-z

CRISPR–Cas gene editors are now both moving into the clinic and being embraced as a means to find and validate drug targets. But for Jennifer Doudna, who helped pioneer this promise with her work at UC Berkeley, the full potential of these tools will only be unleashed when they can be used at scale. To this end, Doudna and colleagues partnered last year with GlaxoSmithKline to launch the Laboratory for Genomic Research (LGR), a US$67 million effort aimed at industrializing the CRISPR–Cas workflow for the detailed exploration of human genetics. One year on, she spoke with Asher Mullard about her hopes for CRISPR–Cas editors as drug discovery tools, the types of projects the LGR is working on and the challenges they face. CRISPR–Cas gene editors are now both moving into the clinic and being embraced as a means to find and validate drug targets. But for Jennifer Doudna, who helped pioneer this promise with her work at UC Berkeley, the full potential of these tools will only be unleashed when they can be used at scale. To this end, Doudna and colleagues partnered last year with GlaxoSmithKline to launch the Laboratory for Genomic Research (LGR), a US$67 million effort aimed at industrializing the CRISPR–Cas workflow for the detailed exploration of human genetics. One year on, she spoke with Asher Mullard about her hopes for CRISPR–Cas editors as drug discovery tools, the types of projects the LGR is working on and the challenges they face.