Arbor Biotechnologies, Inc., a biotechnology company discovering and developing the next generation of genetic medicines, announced a collaboration with Ginkgo Bioworks, which is building the leading platform for cell programming and biosecurity, to leverage Ginkgo’s comprehensive Codebase and automated Foundry to jointly optimize Arbor’s novel precision editors.
Arbor utilizes its computational metagenomic discovery engine and protein engineering expertise to identify and optimize genetic editors with the potential to treat a broad range of genetic diseases. The company’s portfolio of novel gene editors has significant therapeutic potential due to, among other things, their unique protospacer adjacent motifs (PAMs), which may enable access to nearly all sites in the genome, their varied cut types, which can potentially correct a wider range of diseases, their smaller editing technology, which allows the use of additional delivery technologies, and their high specificity, which can enable improved safety profiles. Ginkgo’s expertise in high throughput exploration of genetic design spaces complements Arbor’s in-house capabilities, and the collaboration is expected to accelerate Arbor’s precision editor optimization campaign through massively parallel library design, automated mammalian cell experimentation and iterative AI-guided protein engineering.
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“Patients are at the center of everything we do at Arbor, and we are thrilled to partner with Ginkgo to hasten the advancement of our precision editing technologies into therapeutic applications that have the potential to address diseases with high unmet medical need,” said Devyn Smith, Ph.D., CEO of Arbor. “Ginkgo’s expertise aligns well with our goals, and their technology will synergize with our in-house capabilities, potentially fueling a faster, more efficient expansion of our toolbox of gene editing technologies.”
“As we can see from the recent landmark regulatory approval of the world’s first CRISPR-based treatment, the gene editing landscape is rapidly advancing, with continuous innovation and optimization of novel technologies that are revolutionizing the way we consider and address disease,” said Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. “This collaboration with Arbor is an exciting project for us, as it gives us an opportunity to leverage our platform-driven approach to contribute to the gene editing sector’s fast-moving evolution. We look forward to expanding our capabilities in this field by working with such an innovative pioneer as Arbor to power technologies with the potential for transformative impact.”
SOURCE : PRNewswire