SNIPR BIOME ApS, a leading CRISPR and microbiome biotechnology company, is opening a 175 square meter state-of-the-art BSL2/GMO2-classified laboratory in Copenhagen. The new facilities will be among the largest GMO2 laboratories in Scandinavia and Northern Europe with the capacity to handle clinical samples from the phase 1 clinical trial with SNIPR001 and expand the company’s CRISPR and microbiome portfolio.
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Placing the laboratory in Denmark was not a coincidence, but a strategic choice. “The Danish life science environment is incredibly strong, which makes us able to attract skilled researchers to Denmark. This provides excellent growth conditions for a company like us, and we hope that some of these researchers will become members of the SNIPR Biome family. However, we should not forget, that the competition for talent is global and therefore it requires ongoing political focus and investments, if Denmark also in the future should be the natural choice for conducting research and clinical activities”, says Dr. Christian Grøndahl, Co-founder & CEO.
The BSL2/GMO2-classification obtained from Arbejdstilsynet (Work Environment Authorities, Denmark), allows for working with pathogenic bacteria that are treatable but not airborne.
“Our SNIPR Biome Lab team has been working hard to get the GMO2 lab ready and we are extremely excited to officially take these new facilities into use. The expansion of our laboratory capacity allows us to automate R&D processes and enables us to explore new research areas in house, and importantly speeding up analysis of samples from clinical trials” Dr. Milan Zdravkovic, Chief Medical Officer and Head of R&D at SNIPR Biome adds.
The classification, combined with the additional laboratory capacity will strengthen SNIPR Biome’s R&D & clinical activities enabling an automated high-throughput approach by using larger state-of-the-art liquid-handling robots and chambers dedicated to anaerobic work. This highly automated laboratory will be vital for the synthetic biology pipeline – i.e. screening and testing CRISPR constructs on large in-house panels of potentially pathogenic bacteria and, importantly, generating big data that will be collected for AI and machine learning, ultimately benefiting future patients.