The CRISPR patent fight appears to be over, at least for the moment. A ruling by the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board found no “interference” in patents awarded to Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The loser, pending appeals, is the University of California, and the much-heralded biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who, along with Emmanuelle Charpentier, developed the first methods for exploiting a natural bacterial gene-editing system known as CRISPR. The patent office determined that Zhang's innovations, which used CRISPR to edit mammalian cells, were not simply elaborations of what Doudna and Charpentier had already discovered in previous experiments. The University of California
It’s been a huge two days for CRISPR, the biotechnology innovation that makes it far easier for scientists to edit DNA in living cells. Yesterday, a report from the National Academies of Science didn’t rule out eventually using the technology to rewrite the genes of babies shortly after conception. Today, a patent ruling gave key intellectual property to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, causing shares in one biotechnology company involved in CRISPR work to shoot up and two others to crater. The stakes couldn’t seem higher. This is a technology, we are told, that could rewrite life. The birth of a new industry. I even wrote, four years ago, that CRISPR could “change biotech forever.” And