NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Editas Medicine has exclusively licensed a newly released CRISPR enzyme from Integrated DNA Technologies for human therapeutic applications, IDT said today.
The new enzyme, Alt-R Cas12a (Cpf1) Ultra is a mutant of Acidaminococcus sp. BV3L6 Cas12a (Cpf1) that has enhanced editing activity, reaching or exceeding the performance of Cas9, according to IDT. The new enzyme also retains activity across a wider temperature range than the wild-type enzyme, making it useful for genome editing in additional organisms, including plants.
Editas had previously obtained an exclusive license to the enzyme for therapeutic use from the Broad Institute, acting on behalf of itself and Harvard College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Tokyo.
"We are proud that IDT continues to take the lead in developing and supplying innovative CRISPR tools to the research community," IDT CSO Mark Behlke said in a statement. "Alt-R Cas12a (Cpf1) Ultra is a powerful example of this. Researchers will really benefit from the efficiency and versatility that it brings to their gene-editing projects."
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.