Replies to post #175061 on Biotech Values

[biocqr]

CRISPR > A Powerful New Way to Edit DNA

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/health/a-powerful-new-way-to-edit-dna.html?smid=tw-share

There are also already ways to change genes, namely zinc-finger nucleases and transcription activator-like effector nucleases, or Talens. The biotechnology company Sangamo BioSciences is already conducting a clinical trial of a treatment for H.I.V. that uses zinc fingers to alter patients’ immune cells to make them resistant to the virus.

Both techniques use proteins to guide where the DNA is cut; it is more difficult to develop a protein that binds to a specific DNA sequence than it is to make a piece of RNA with the matching sequence.

With zinc fingers “it might take you months or years to get something to work well for one gene,” said Dr. Gersbach at Duke. With Crispr, “it takes days to weeks.”
Quick is not always accurate, however. While Crispr is generally precise, it can have off-target effects, cutting DNA at places where the sequence is similar but not identical to that of the guide RNA.

Crispr “may not yet have adequate specificity to completely displace” the older techniques, Dana Carroll, a biochemistry professor at the University of Utah, wrote in a commentary in Nature Biotechnology in September.

[DewDiligence]

Only Crispr and zinc [finger] compete for gene editing, and Crispr is considered quicker and easier. RNAi does not change the genome.

Understood; however, this doesn’t answer my question: Does Crispr make RNAi and zinc-finger platform companies less valuable?