U.S. Patent for Improved CRISPR Genome-Editing Method

Mer­ck, a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny and leader in genome edit­ing, announced that the Unit­ed States Patent and Trade­mark Office has issued a for­mal notice allow­ing Merck’s patent appli­ca­tion direct­ed to its proxy-CRISPR technology.

“This is our first U.S. patent for CRISPR, and as a lead­ing inno­va­tor of CRISPR tech­nol­o­gy, we will con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate with sci­en­tists around the world to ensure that the full poten­tial of this pow­er­ful tool is real­ized, respon­si­bly and eth­i­cal­ly. This is great news for researchers in the U.S., as they now have more gene-edit­ing options that accel­er­ate drug development.”

Udit Batra, mem­ber of the Mer­ck Exec­u­tive Board and CEO, Life Science

Merck’s proxy-CRISPR is a new genome-edit­ing tech­nique that makes CRISPR more effi­cient, flex­i­ble and spe­cif­ic by open­ing the genome for mod­i­fi­ca­tion of DNA. The tech­nol­o­gy can help sci­en­tists mod­i­fy regions of the genome which are dif­fi­cult to access.

This U.S. patent allowance marks Merck’s 13^th CRISPR patent world­wide. The company’s CRISPR patent port­fo­lio includes grant­ed patents in Aus­tralia, Cana­da, Europe, Sin­ga­pore, Chi­na, Israel and South Korea. Those patents are for CRISPR-relat­ed tech­nolo­gies cov­er­ing foun­da­tion­al and alter­na­tive genome-edit­ing methods.

To deploy the proxy-CRISPR method, two CRISPR sys­tems are designed to tar­get the genome in prox­im­i­ty to each oth­er and work togeth­er. One CRISPR sys­tem opens a region­al “door,” push­ing away block­ing chro­matin pro­teins, while the oth­er walks through it to find the exact loca­tion for mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Since the result­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tion requires two CRISPR bind­ing events, the proxy-CRISPR method can enable twice the speci­fici­ty of indi­vid­ual CRISPR systems.

The com­pa­ny has received patents for its CRISPR paired nick­ase tech­nol­o­gy (cleav­ing oppo­site strands of a chro­mo­so­mal sequence to cre­ate a dou­ble-strand­ed break) in Aus­tralia, Cana­da and Europe. Patents for Merck’s CRISPR inte­gra­tion tech­nol­o­gy (chro­mo­so­mal cut­ting of the sequence of eukary­ot­ic cells and inser­tion of a DNA sequence) have been grant­ed in Aus­tralia, Cana­da, Europe, Sin­ga­pore, Chi­na, Israel and South Korea. Mer­ck is licens­ing its entire patent port­fo­lio for all fields of use.

CRISPR tech­nol­o­gy is a core com­pe­ten­cy for the com­pa­ny, which has 15 years’ expe­ri­ence with genome edit­ing, span­ning from dis­cov­ery to man­u­fac­tur­ing. Mer­ck rec­og­nizes that genome edit­ing has result­ed in major advance­ments in bio­log­i­cal research and med­i­cine.  At the same time, the grow­ing poten­tial of genome-edit­ing tech­nolo­gies has opened sci­en­tif­ic, legal and soci­etal con­cerns. The com­pa­ny sup­ports research with genome edit­ing under care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of eth­i­cal and legal stan­dards. Mer­ck has estab­lished an inde­pen­dent, exter­nal Bioethics Advi­so­ry Pan­el to pro­vide guid­ance for research in which its busi­ness­es are involved, includ­ing research on or using genome edit­ing, and has devel­oped, defined and trans­par­ent­ly pub­lished a clear oper­a­tional posi­tion tak­ing into account sci­en­tif­ic and soci­etal issues to inform promis­ing ther­a­peu­tic approach­es for use in research and applications.