CRISPR life beyond Cas9

Arbor Biotechnologies, which emerged from stealth mode less than a year ago, has found a deep-pocketed believer in its founding premise: that the world is full of microbes pumping out amazing, and potentially lucrative, proteins and other biomolecules (Cas9, anyone?) and Arbor will find them.

On Thursday the Cambridge-based company, whose founders include CRISPR developer Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute, announced a research collaboration with Vertex Pharmaceuticals to discover novel proteins including DNA-snipping endonucleases like Cas9, CRISPR's most famous enabler. Arbor will do the bench work and Vertex will pay for it. Although financial specifics weren't announced, Vertex will pay Arbor based on (unspecified) R&D and commercial milestones, as well as royalties on anything that gets commercialized.

The goal is to develop genome-editing therapies for cystic fibrosis and four other diseases to be named later. In a statement, Vertex CSO Dr. David Altshuler sang the praises of Arbor's high-throughput screening platform, saying it would help Vertex "develop innovative gene-editing therapies.”