In the afternoon of October 7th 2020, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to French microbiologist, geneticist and biochemist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna for their discovery of the CRISPR gene editing system.
In 2012, Dr. Doudna and Dr. Charpentier published a landmark paper in Science, and confirmed the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system they designed can cut the two strands of DNA at a specific location, and the potential to use this system to edit DNA sequence in the genome. From gene editing to transcriptional regulation, CRISPR-Cas tools have rewritten the forefront of nucleic acid manipulation in biology. This revolutionary discovery provides unlimited possibilities for the entire biotechnology field.
With this news, Dr. Dong Liu, Chairman and CEO of Kind Pharmaceuticals LLC saw an important opportunity. As the founder and leader of Kind Pharma, closely following the forefront of international life sciences, Dr. Dong attended the annual conference hold by Decheng Capital Investment in 2019. He had the honor to meet Dr. Doudna at the meeting, both presented as Decheng invested companies’ representative.
Dr. Jennifer Doudna is Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Doudna shared the CRISPR gene editing system with the participants at Decheng annual meeting, which aroused great response from the participants.
Dr. Liu Dong took this opportunity to introduce the significance, major breakthroughs, and latest developments of AND017 and AND019 developed by Kind Pharma for the treatment of human diseases. In October 2019, the AND017 mechanism of action also won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. He shared thoughts and opinion with Dr. Doudna in the use of CRISPR gene editing technology to screen drug targets and facilitated the possibility of further cooperation.
Congrats to Dr. Doudna and Decheng!
