Two deals from Novartis show that industry is ready to embrace the gene-editing CRISPR–Cas9 technology into its target-screening, target-validation and therapeutic tool-box.

In a deal with Intellia Therapeutics, Novartis gained exclusive rights to use Intellia's CRISPR gene-editing technology to engineer chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-Ts) and haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). Novartis, a leader in the CAR-T field, is already developing its CTL019 CAR-T treatment, which is made up of autologous T-cells that express the CD19-specific CAR, in Phase II trials in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, acute lymphocytic leukaemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Novartis has also been expanding into the HSC space, and last year bought into Gamida Cell, who are developing a CD133+ HSC product for use in leukaemia, lymphoma and sickle-cell disease.

Separately, Novartis partnered with Caribou Biosciences, gaining access to Caribou's CRISPR–Cas9 platform “to research new CRISPR-based drug target screening and validation technologies”. Caribou, which is developing CRISPR–Cas9 research tools for multiple sectors, including industrial and agricultural biotech, is a co-founder of Intellia.

Novartis has not disclosed financial terms of either deal.

The CRISPR–Cas9 patent landscape remains treacherous, however, with three firms battling for control of the gene-editing technology. One of the seminal papers in this field was published in Science in 2012 (Science 337, 816–821; 2012), but the corresponding authors of this paper are now working at odds to one another. Whereas Jennifer Doudna, of the University of California, Berkeley, USA, assigned her intellectual property to Caribou, Emmanuelle Charpentier, of Umeå University, Sweden, assigned her rights to CRISPR Therapeutics. Editas Medicine, meanwhile, is staking its claim on the basis of work by Feng Zhang, of the Broad Institute, Massachusetts, USA. Editas Medicine announced in December that it had also secured exclusive licences to CRISPR–Cas9 and TALEN gene-editing technologies from the Broad Institute, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital and Duke University.