Reducing off-target base editing; plus a CAR T-enhancing switch and more
BioCentury’s roundup of translational news
ToolGen Inc. (KOSDAQ:199800) co-founder Jin-Soo Kim and colleagues from the Korean Institute for Basic Science described in Nature Biotechnology a set of engineered mitochondrial base editors with improved efficiency and precision over an unmodified version of the technology.
The enzyme class the base editors belong to, which was first described in Nature by David Liu’s group in 2020, is dubbed DddA-derived cytosine base editors (DdCBEs) and catalyzes C/G-to-T/A conversions in human mtDNA. The bacterially derived editors consist of split halves that only edit DNA when combined. Kim and colleagues improved on the method by substituting alanine for amino acid residues at the interface between the split DddA halves and showed the editors produced minimal off-target activity...