Now, onto the latest headlines

“It’s 1849 for CRISPR enzymes, and fortunes are up for grabs,” my STAT colleague Sharon Begley writes. The latest treasure unearthed in today’s biological gold rush is an enzyme called CasX that looks promising for use in genome editing. The CRISPR protein, described in a new Nature paper, was discovered in groundwater from an old uranium mine in Colorado. The UC Berkeley research also involved analyzing water samples from the abandoned Iron Mountain gold and silver mine in Northern California. Sharon has the details.

Over at Alphabet, Google has filed a patent application that may offer a peek behind the curtain at a predictive medical records system it’s developing, MobiHealthNews reports. Meanwhile, Alphabet’s aging research unit Calico named Amgen veteran Dr. Aarif Khakoo as its head of drug development, a newly created position.

San Francisco-based workplace messaging company Slack, which just filed to go public, may be trying to become a chatting platform for health care providers, CNBC’s Chrissy Farr reports. The company recently updated its website to say it’s compliant at least in some situations with the federal health privacy law known as HIPAA.

Two months ago, Bay Area-based biotech bellwether Gilead Sciencesnamed a new CEO, industry veteran Daniel O’Day. But because of commitments at his old job at Roche, O’Day won’t start work at Gilead until March 1, leaving the company rudderless at a pivotal moment, my STAT colleague Adam Feuerstein writes.

California has bold ambitions to provide medical coverage to more of its residents — but it’s not on track to have enough qualified workers to provide all that care by 2030. In a new report outlining a plan to address the problem, a commission is calling for expanding the power of nurse practitioners and offering scholarships to students willing to work in health care in rural areas, among other strategies.

In the soda wars, the city of San Francisco took a loss as a federal appeals court for the second time blocked a local law requiring warnings on sodas and other sugary drinks that drinking them can cause obesity and other diseases, according to the Associated Press.

In Oregon, lawmakers are considering a handful of bills aimed at driving down prescription drug prices, Portland’s ABC affiliate reports. One piece of legislation would require warnings about price hikes. Another would require pharmacists to dole out a generic alternative when a brand-name drug is prescribed.

In previous editions of this newsletter, I’ve kept you posted on a high-stakes dispute centered around how the University of Californiasystem pays to access research from journal publisher Elsevier. The two sides have now twice pushed back their deadline to keep negotiating, and there’s no sign of when a deal might be reached. “We are still far apart on key issues, but hopeful that we might find a way to come together,” Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, a librarian at UC Berkeley who’s helping lead the UC’s negotiations, told me.