Eureka moment: April 2024 was the month when Prime Medicine announced it had convinced the FDA of the preclinical data behind prime editing to enable the first trials in humans to move forward.
Why it matters: Gene editing is difficult and, until now, has relied on different types of viral vectors to deliver a working copy of a gene into human cells. Prime editing offers a more direct way to edit human cells.
How it’s being used now: Prime editing or base editing, as it’s sometimes known, is being explored by a number of companies, including Prime Medicine and Beam Therapeutics.
What’s next: Early clinical data is expected to read out in 2025.
To dig deeper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41596-022-00724-4