Page 34 - Christiana Care Focus June July 2018

Extraordinary People | GeneEditingInstitute C O N T I N U E D
“As the only gene editing research institute embedded in a community cancer program, we understand the need for personalized cancer treatment, because we see cancer patients and partner with the doctors who care for them every day,” said Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., director of the Gene Editing Institute of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center
NovellusDx’s mission is to provide functional information about mutations and their responses to drugs so that oncologists can treat patients with precision therapies and bio-pharmaceutical companies can develop drugs more effectively. The NovellusDx approach is to monitor the functional effects of mutations and observe the effects of drugs, drug combinations and drug candidates on the activity level caused by the mutations.
& Research Institute at Christiana Care. “Thanks to a generous grant from the BIRD Foundation, our partnership with NovellusDx is already bearing fruit as our new gene editing technology is enhancing the capacity of NovellusDx to lead the way in personalized cancer therapies.”
“We congratulate our partners at the Gene Editing Institute for their research and this much deserved award,” said Haim Gil-Ad, CEO of NovellusDx. “We are extremely grateful for the BIRD Foundation grant that advanced our work with the Gene Editing Institute and helps us progress from next generation sequencing data to functional data, allowing us to deliver lower cost, personalized cancer
In T
late 2016, the Gene Editing Institute and NovellusDx received a $900,000 grant from the U.S.-Israel Binational Industrial R&D
Foundation (BIRD Foundation) to develop a new series of state-of-the-art gene editing technologies that help identify the genetic mechanism responsible for both the onset and progression of many types of cancer.
treatments quickly and efficiently to better the clinical utility.”
he Gene Editing Institute and NovellusDx have The BIRD Foundation promotes collaboration between recently made landmark discoveries in the use
U.S. and Israeli companies in a wide range of technology of the CRISPR gene editing tool that can impact
the delivery of cancer treatments. In April submitted to the BIRD Foundation undergo evaluation by 2018, the Gene Editing Institute announced a major new
fields for the purpose of joint product development. Projects
the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology of the U.S. Department of Commerce and by the Israel Innovation Authority.
“The Gene Editing Institute’s partnership with NovellusDx has elevated the general interest in the U.S.-Israel Binational Industrial R&D Foundation in the region,” said Vered Nohi, executive director of the Philadelphia-Israel Chamber of Commerce.
“As the only gene
editing research
institute embedded in
a community cancer
program, we understand the need for personalized cancer treatment, because we see cancer patients and partner with the doctors who care for them every day.”
Eric Kmiec, Ph.D.
development in the CRISPR Journal of the first CRISPR protocol to enable CRISPR-directed DNA modifications outside the human cell. The new “cell free” technology uses a protein, called Cas12a, that allows researchers to make multiple edits to DNA quicker and more precisely than ever before in vitro, that is in a test tube, petri dish or on a chip.
In addition, in 2016 scientists at the Gene Editing Institute described in the journal Scientific Reports how they combined CRISPR with short strands of synthetic DNA to greatly enhance the precision and reliability of the CRISPR gene editing technique. Called excision and corrective therapy, or EXACT, this new tool acts as both a template and a bandage for repairing a malfunctioning gene.
The Philadelphia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, established in 1987, is an independent non-profit connecting Israeli and Philadelphia, southern New Jersey and Delaware- based innovators, companies, governmental agencies
and economic development organizations. It supports business collaborations, as well as encourages and assists Israeli companies opening U.S. offices in our region, and represents the US-Israel Binational Industrial R&D (BIRD) Foundation in Pennsylvania and Delaware. 
32 CHRISTIANA CARE HEALTH SYSTEM