In 2017, Flagship partner Geoffrey von Maltzahn, principal Jacob Rubens, associate Rob Citorik, and others began an exploration inside Flagship Labs to address these limitations by asking, What if nature evolved a better way to alter genomes than cutting DNA? The result is Tessera Therapeutics. But gene therapy and gene editing have significant limitations in the modifications they can make to the genome, the cells they can affect, and how they are manufactured and delivered to cells, leaving today’s genetic medicine powerless against thousands of diseases. Both technologies are enormously promising, and in some cases they have already realized their promise and cured diseases. Today, this area, sometimes called genetic medicine, stands upon two technological pillars: gene therapy and gene editing. This has opened the possibility of creating therapies that not only treat previously untreatable disease but might also cure patients for life with a single treatment. Recently, scientists and doctors have gained the power to add and subtract tiles from our genomic mosaic. Every year the number of human genomes that have been sequenced increases, as does our understanding of how genes provide the instructions to make us healthy or unhealthy human beings. About 60,000 other genetic sites are significantly associated with traits and diseases such as body mass, cardiovascular disease, neurological conditions, metabolic diseases, immune responses, and many cancers. These include the cystic fibrosis transmembrane receptor, which when mutated causes cystic fibrosis, which can severely damage the lungs and other organs to the point of being life-threatening. Development, homeostasis, and reproduction aging, disease, and death-all are driven by the activity of genes.ĭoctors know of about 4,000 genes that directly cause diseases. Specific sequences of base pairs encode genes, which serve every function in our bodies.
#TESSERA THERAPEUTICS CODE#
These represent the code of life and give rise to the complex phenomena that define health and disease. It is composed of base pairs, the nucleobases A, C, T, and G-the building blocks of DNA. Our genome is a mosaic that has evolved over millennia.
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