Arbor Biotechnologies comes out of stealth mode

Arbor Biotechnologies has emerged with a new CRISPR associated enzyme and a founding team that includes gene-editing trailblazer, Feng Zhang.

The company announced its first scientific findings of a new enzyme, Cas13d, a CRISPR-Cas13 enzyme that could offer advantages over other enzymes, including its small size, allowing easier packaging into the viruses used to deliver CRISPR. It was found through the company’s discovery platform, which combines artificial intelligence, genome sequencing, gene synthesis and high-throughput screening to comb “the natural genetic diversity” for peptides, proteins, and enzymes that could be developed into drugs.

“We are now on the cusp of being able to convert sequence data into a catalog of protein functions,” said Winston Yan, an Arbor founder, and former graduate student of Zhang.

Zhang, a core member of the Broad Institute is known for his work on CRISPR-Cas9 and for co-founding the CRISPR biotech, Editas. CRISPR-Cas9 targets and cuts DNA, making permanent changes to the genome, but Cas13 systems alter RNA, molecules that translate instructions from DNA to make proteins in the body. The approach is becoming more popular with scientists because it’s reversible RNA naturally degrades and RNA editing does not tamper with the genome.

Zhang published a paper detailing a Cas13 system, REPAIR (RNA Editing for Programmable A to I Replacement), which edits single nucleosides, or “letters,” in RNA helix. Specifically, the system can change the nucleoside adenosine (A) to inosine (I), which is read as guanosine (G) inside cells, and so, could be useful in diseases linked to G-to-A mutation, such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Parkinson’s disease.

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