Full Circles Therapeutics Inc. reposted this
Thank you, Mark! You are among the first group of people who used C4DNA. The Full Circles team is great under the leadership of Howard Wu, and much of the work after 2022 was done under extremely tight budgets and with generous support from Quintara Biosciences There are many unsung heroes behind the Full Circles story. The initial idea on single stranded DNA was from Jianxin Hu in the summer of 2016. Jianxin was working on human diseases model in Biogen, and needed ssDNA for his transgenic work. Much of the early knowledge on ssDNA as a better HDR donor template was from Jianxin. Jianxin was Quintara DNA sequencing customer during his postdoc in the Black lab at UCSF. Jin Huh did the initial set of experiments which gave us the first hint that circular form works better than the linear form. Jin was one of my very first DNA sequencing customer when the synbio just started in Potter Street, off Berkeley campus. Fortunately I met Jin again in Boston where he did his postdoc at the Weiss lab of MIT. Mark Neff, Ph.D. was the one helped me get the thoughts organized, and drafted the foundation IP. Mark flew to the Bay Area, and spent an entire month helping me draft the IP application and talked with IP lawyers at Perkins. Mark and I did postdoc together in Berkeley. Mark is the best dog geneticist and a true life long friend. Tae-Gon Cha did his postdoc in the Voigt lab at MIT. The Voigt lab was my first generation DNA sequencing customer, started at the Berkeley, later at UCSF, and recently at MIT. Quintara followed Chris’s footsteps and set up our Boston lab. Without Quintara’s Boston lab, there is no Full Circles. I visited the Voigt lab around Thanksgiving time in 2017, and got a chance to talk with TG who just joined the Voigt lab from Purdue. TG was trained as a material scientist and worked on biological battery based on phage M13. I was attracted by the elegant engineered phagemid system TG developed. Our C4 DNA system was largely inspired by TG phagemid systems. I am very grateful that TG later worked for Full Circles for one year. Michael Cox is my graduate advisor at UW-Madison. Mike is the best advisor I can ever dream of. He is never on my way but his support is always there when I needed. I studied the mechanism of homologous DNA recombination using RecA mediated DNA strand exchange as a model system. Mike developed the system when he did his postdoc with Bob Lehman at Stanford. We use circular single stranded DNA (M13 virion DNA) in the DNA strand exchange reaction. Mike sent all the phage materials from Madison . Full Circles Therapeutics Inc. comes from my life long journey on cssDNA. Mike and I found RecA could form stable nucleoprotein filaments on cssDNA but not on lssDNA. I started to realize cssDNA potential in current paper. I told Mike cssDNA comes in a Full Circle. Many people helped, especially those helped financially.
We are beyond thrilled to announce our recent publication in Nature Biotechnology and the grant of a pivotal patent for our innovative non-viral gene editing approach. The paper titled “Efficient non-viral immune cell engineering using circular single-stranded DNA-mediated genomic integration" can be accessed at https://lnkd.in/gH3pcfRn In this study, we introduce a revolutionary technology that addresses the key challenges of conventional immune cell modification methods, such as viral vector-based gene editing. Our approach uses a miniaturized circular single-stranded DNA (cssDNA), an unparalleled form of its kind, to enable stable, safe, efficient and precise genomic integration in immune cells without the risks of viral delivery systems. This breakthrough has the potential to transform gene therapies, providing safer, more efficient, and cost effective solutions for a variety of diseases, including cancer and autoimmune disorders. "We believe this non-viral method of immune cell engineering marks a transformative advancement in the field," said Dr. Howard (Hao) Wu, Chief Scientific Officer of Full Circles Therapeutics. "By leveraging our proprietary C4DNAtechnology, we can enhance the safety, scalability, and efficiency of engineered immune cells such as CAR-T and CAR-NK, pushing us closer to the development of off-the-shelf, ready-to-use therapies." We're also excited to share that the foundational patent for this technology has been granted in Japan—one of the leading global markets in oncology and gene therapy. The patent covers the use of generic circular ssDNA for targeted genome integration, with promising preclinical results. "We're excited about the broad potential of this technology," said Dr. Richard Shan, CEO of Full Circles Therapeutics. "This breakthrough can revolutionize treatments for diseases traditionally difficult to tackle with conventional methods. Our mission is to make these therapies more accessible, scalable, and effective, advancing patient care across the globe." Big shoutouts to all our collaborators and team members for making this groundbreaking work possible! #ImmuneCellEngineering #GeneTherapy #NonViralTech #CAR-T #Immunotherapy #FullCirclesTherapeutics #NatureBiotechnology #C4DNA #CellAndGeneTherapy