A St. Louis company focused on developing better soybean genetics has made a new discovery that could be used to treat cancer. Confluence Genetics launched Cas-CLEAR last month, saying the new CRISPR gene editing technology platform can eliminate cancer cells with specific genetic signatures.
The discovery grew out of research into new gene editing chemistry that Benson Hill was pursuing over a decade ago for plants, a time when much of the early CRISPR technology was more focused on human applications, says Confluence Genetics senior director of research and development Matt Begemann. (Benson Hill’s intellectual property was folded into Confluence Genetics last year after the former filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.)
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“We found a lot of gene editing chemistry that worked really well in plants, and we also found some editing chemistry that did not work well in plants,” he says. “We were thinking about putting it on the shelf and maybe never coming back to it.”
After scientists at the company found some of the gene editing chemistry they discovered was killing the bacteria they tried to run analyses on, they dug into the underlying mechanism and what was really happening, Begemann explains.
“[They] found this was not gene editing chemistry. It’s still a CRISPR system, but it doesn’t do gene editing,” he says. “Rather than just making a single cut and floating away and allowing an edit to occur, it makes a cut and then changes shape and then it indiscriminately will chew up both DNA and RNA. And that leads to cell death.”
While that may sound scary or concerning, it has valuable applications, Begemann says. That could mean killing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics; enabling a plant to potentially kill an invading pathogen, such as a bacteria, fungus or nematode; or even targeting specific genetic mutations that cause cancer.
“If we can design this Cas-CLEAR to go after those very specific cancer mutations, and we can deliver it to the right tissue, what we’ve done is we’ve created a very targeted chemotherapy that would only kill those cancer cells and leave the normal or natural cells unaffected,” he says.
Already, published studies from the University of Utah and University of California Berkeley have independently verified the new technology works to destroy specific, targeted cells. It is technology Confluence Genetics holds the patent for, which it received in 2018.
And that could present another revenue opportunity for the young company.
“The universities are using our patented technology, the same sequences that we discovered,” Begemann says. “At the end of the day, if somebody does want to turn this into some kind of therapy, they would need a license from us to do that. For commercial applications, people are going to have to partner with us, and that’s what we want to do.”
Cas-CLEAR still needs further development to ensure it works only on cancer cells and not healthy cells. The lab run by Jennifer Doudna at the University of California Berkeley has demonstrated this specific gene editing tool works in a mouse model, Begemann says, meaning the next steps are likely to include developing better delivery and achieving stronger cell death.
“We’re in an interesting spot where we’ve got proof of concept of the technology, and we know the areas we need to improve it,” he says.
That work is not likely something Confluence Genetics will take on, however, as the company is directly focused on developing new genetic technology that applies to soybeans, even if new discoveries have applications in other fields, Begemann says.
“It’s really important to isolate that from the rest of the operation. The rest of the operation needs to be laser focused on using AI breeding to develop new soybean varieties and meeting the demands of our end customer,” he says. “If we’re developing a technology that can be used in plant defense or as an antimicrobial for agriculture, and it can still be applied to something like oncology. Then we should be open about how we monetize this whole thing and get the really great technology into multiple people’s hands.”
