Patent for foundational genome-editing technology

Mer­ck, the vibrant sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, announced that the Aus­tralian Patent Office has allowed the company’s patent appli­ca­tion for the use of paired CRISPR nick­as­es. Paired nick­as­es rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant step in increas­ing safe­ty by dri­ving speci­fici­ty through a high­ly flex­i­ble and effi­cient approach to reduce off-tar­get effects. This improves CRISPR’s abil­i­ty to fix dis­eased genes while not affect­ing healthy ones.

“We’ve made tremen­dous strides in recent years evolv­ing CRISPR tech­nol­o­gy, and this is a piv­otal time in sci­en­tif­ic research. Merck’s paired nick­ase CRISPR tech­nol­o­gy is impor­tant for researchers who need high­ly accu­rate meth­ods when devel­op­ing treat­ments for dif­fi­cult-to-treat dis­eases. This new patent allowance rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant advance­ment in safe­ty for CRISPR-enabled therapeutics.”
Udit Batra, mem­ber of the Mer­ck Exec­u­tive Board, and CEO, Life Science

The allowed patent appli­ca­tion cov­ers a foun­da­tion­al CRISPR strat­e­gy in which two CRISPR nick­as­es are tar­get­ed to a com­mon gene tar­get and work togeth­er by nick­ing or cleav­ing oppo­site strands of chro­mo­so­mal sequence to cre­ate a dou­ble-strand­ed break. This process can option­al­ly include an exoge­nous or donor sequence for inser­tion in the same man­ner as Merck’s patent­ed CRISPR inte­gra­tion tech­nol­o­gy. The require­ment of two CRISPR bind­ing events great­ly reduces the chances of off-tar­get cut­ting at oth­er loca­tions in the genome.
In addi­tion to allow­ing a patent appli­ca­tion on paired nick­as­es, the Aus­tralian Patent Office recent­ly announced the for­mal grant of Merck’s 2017 CRISPR inte­gra­tion patent, fol­low­ing with­draw­al of four inde­pen­dent, anony­mous­ly filed oppositions.
Merck’s CRISPR inte­gra­tion patent port­fo­lio includes grant­ed patents in Aus­tralia, Cana­da, Chi­na, Europe, Israel, Sin­ga­pore and South Korea. These CRISPR patents are direct­ed to chro­mo­so­mal inte­gra­tion, or cut­ting of the sequence of eukary­ot­ic cells and inser­tion of a syn­thet­ic exoge­nous DNA sequence to make a desired genom­ic change.
Paired CRISPR nick­ase meth­ods build on oth­er tech­nolo­gies in Merck’s CRISPR patent port­fo­lio, includ­ing CRISPR inte­gra­tion. Com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions need Merck’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty for CRISPR-based inser­tion of DNA if they seek to cor­rect genet­ic defects in the somat­ic cells of gene ther­a­py patients. Mer­ck is licens­ing this patent port­fo­lio for all fields of use.