The fact that the microbiome field is a Medicon Valley stronghold has been proven once again.
According to a recently published press release form The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), an international team of scientists lead by Morten Otto Alexander Sommer, professor at MVA-member DTU Biosustain (and former MVA Vice chairman of the Board and founding father of the MVA Microbiome Network) has now engineered the first published CRISPR-based candidate for a drug that targets E. coli directly and leaves the microbiome intact. The work was carried out in collaboration with JAFRAL (Slovenia), JMI Laboratories (US), and Division of Infectuous Diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine (US).
The development of the drug candidate to a stage where it is ready for tests on humans is decribed in a newly published new paper in Nature Biotechnology titled ‘Engineered phage with antibacterial CRISPR–Cas selectively reduce E. coli burden in mice’
Read the full press release from DTU