Vicinitas Therapeutics is developing small molecule drugs that stabilize key proteins, preventing them from going to a cell’s built-in disposal system. The startup, which stems from a research partnership between Novartis and the University of California, Berkeley, has raised $65 million in Series A funding.
Gene-editing medicines developer Intellia Therapeutics is paying $45 million up front to acquire Rewrite Therapeutics. The startup’s technology brings Intellia another tool for its genetic medicines toolbox, one that could enable even more precise edits.
We have the opportunity to design systems that give people greater capacity for the work where human presence matters most: listening, understanding, reassuring, deciding, and caring.
The prize went to Jennifer Doudna of the University of California Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Institute. Charpentier published her research on the biology behind the technology in 2011 and collaborated with Doudna. The two discovered it was possible to control the mechanism.
Kyoto University's Tasuku Honjo and MD Anderson's James Allison will share the prize for work that led to immunotherapy drugs like Keytruda and Yervoy.
In a deal worth up to $25 million for ViaCyte, the companies will work together to create allogeneic stem cell therapies to treat the disease.