BOSTON– Broken String Biosciences has renewed its membership in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Genome Editing Consortium, reinforcing its role in shaping industry-wide safety standards for emerging gene-editing technologies.
The company’s INDUCE-seq platform, already in commercial use, helps identify unintended DNA edits that could activate oncogenes or disable tumor suppressors — a critical step in ensuring the safety of therapies using CRISPR, base editing, and prime editing.
“Gene editing holds enormous promise, but without standardized tools to assess both on- and off-target edits, developers will continue to face challenges in demonstrating safety to regulators and the public,” said Felix Dobbs, CEO and co-founder of Broken String. He said early use of INDUCE-seq can reduce the risk of costly regulatory delays and protect both patient safety and investments.
Broken String also collaborates with industry leaders, including AstraZeneca and Novartis, as part of the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute Cell and Gene Therapy – Tracking, Circulation, & Safety (HESI CT-TRACS) Committee.
The NIST Genome Editing Consortium works to generate data that could showcase the advantages of INDUCE-seq, a PCR-free platform designed for unbiased, high-resolution detection of double-strand DNA breaks, offering improved reproducibility, robustness, and sensitivity over existing off-target detection methods.
