The University of California will soon be granted a potentially valuable patent on the revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, according to a document filed by the U.S. patent office on [February 8].
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decision to grant the patent could further fuel a long-running rivalry between the university and the Broad Institute, a biological and genomic research center affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University that also holds patents on CRISPR.
Patent rights to CRISPR could eventually be worth billions of dollars, because the technology could revolutionize the treatment of diseases, crop engineering and other areas.
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The patent being approved stems from an application filed by microbiologists Jennifer Doudna of the University of California at Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier of the University of Vienna in 2012. …
A team at the Broad Institute led by bioengineer Feng Zhang applied for their own patent months later, but paid for a fast-track review process, which landed them the first CRISPR patent in 2014. The Broad’s patents covered CRISPR’s use in so-called eukaryotic cells, which include animal and human cells.
Read full, original post: University of California to be granted pioneering CRISPR patent
