At Edge, we are dedicated to harnessing the latest technologies to create novel vaccines and transformative stem cell and gene therapies for animals.
We have rights to develop and commercialize CRISPR-based animal health products, including an exclusive license to a novel CRISPR platform, CRISPR hybrid RNA-DNA (“chRDNA,” pronounced “chardonnay”), for veterinary medicine. This sophisticated technology allows for multiple, precise genome edits while maintaining genomic integrity, thus enabling cell and gene therapies that are specifically engineered to target animal disease safely and efficiently. The potential applications include genome-edited vaccines, immune cell therapies, cell therapies derived from genome-edited iPSCs, and in vivo genome-edited therapies.
Delivery Technologies
The advanced therapeutics and vaccines being developed by Edge are only as good as the system used to deliver them to the animal.
Edge is leveraging the latest delivery technologies to ensure enhanced safety and efficacy of the product candidates.
These delivery tools include viral vectors, bacterial vectors, and encapsulation technologies.
Encapsulation Technologies: Macro- and micro- encapsulation technologies are demonstrating broad use in the areas of therapeutics and vaccines.
Lipid nanoparticles (LNP) have been extensively explored for mRNA encapsulation and delivery in various biomedical applications, such as COVID vaccines. At Edge, our team is working to harness the power of the latest LNP technologies for veterinary medicine.
Gene Editing
We have rights to CRISPR-Cas technologies including next generation chimeric guides composed of RNA and DNA (chRDNA) for use in animal health. This technology enables us to make multiple edits to the genome simultaneously and reduces off target events for smarter, improved gene-editing, creating safer and more effective gene engineered vaccines and novel therapeutics.
Edge has an exclusive license from Caribou Biosciences
Stem Cells
Pluripotent stem cells have the potential to develop into almost any tissue in the organism, and several human stem-cell derived cell therapies have advanced to clinical trials. Edge is focused on using stem cells, including induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to create mature cells such as mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and endocrine cells. Once transplanted, these therapeutic cells can reduce and even eliminate the need for expensive life-long medication.
One of the limiting factors in the therapeutic use of stem cells is graft rejection whereby the recipient’s immune cells attack the foreign donor tissue (allogeneic therapy). To combat this, patients receiving transplants are often prescribed life-long immunosuppressive medications. This is not an ideal solution based on the high cost and side-effects. Therefore, at Edge, we are pursuing cutting-edge technologies and delivery tools with potential to create therapies that minimize immune-mediated complications.
