Replies to post #1039 on Sangamo Biosciences Inc (SGMO)

[jondoeuk]

EDIT is actively researching large serine recombinases (LSRs) as part of its platform efforts. In a preclinical presentation at ASGCT '24, they included research on identifying potent LSRs as part of its effort to develop novel technologies https://ir.editasmedicine.com/news-releases/news-release-details/editas-medicine-present-pre-clinical-data-demonstrating

The goal of this work is to expand the types of edits they can make in vivo, beyond CRISPR nucleases, to include knocking in entire genes - a capability similar in concept to what recombinase platforms like Sangamo's MINT and Seamless aim for.

[jondoeuk]

The Basecamp Research platform is called aiPGI and powered by EDEN evolutionary AI models (developed with NVIDIA). It ''learns the language of DNA and patterns of evolution.'' The models generate active insertion proteins tailored to target loci in the human genome using just the target sequence.

So rather than evolving or modifying natural recombinases, Basecamp's EDEN models are trained on massive evolutionary datasets to generate proteins with desired insertion activity. This aims to go beyond optimisation with the AI inventing new sequence solutions for insertion enzymes tailored to specific sites, potentially covering a much wider landscape of targets compared to manually (with directed evolution, rational design of recombinases, and/or protein engineering) evolved recombinases.