The Emergence of CRISPR-Based Medicines and the Resurgence of AAV

This is the second part of an interview with Brian Kim, MBA. For the first part, click here.

Brian Kim, MBA

Mission Bio is seeking to overcome limitations of bulk sequencing and standard single cell sequencing methods with Tapestri, its platform that is intended to offer a multiomic single cell sequencing solution. The company recently presented data related to this platform at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) 28th Annual Meeting, held May 13 to 17, 2024, in New Orleans, LA.

During the meeting, CGTLive® interviewed Brian Kim, MBA, the chief executive officer of Mission Bio, to learn more about the company's activities and his thoughts on the field of cell and gene therapy in general. Kim discussed his thoughts on the trends currently being seen in the industry and also spoke about Mission Bio's goals for collaboration and partnerships.

CGTLive: What are your thoughts on ASGCT this year and trends in the industry in general?

Brian Kim, MBA: We're really excited about CRISPR-based medicines. We are seeing more and more of it, especially with some of our early-stage customers. There's a lot of demand for it because of things like we just read in the New York Times today. As such, we believe this is going to be a modality of the future and we're just at the cusp of some of the things that are being worked on. We've been involved with some of the earlier CRISPR-based medicines that have been launched and so this is a place we're very familiar with and this is something we're going to continue with. The second thing that we've heard is really this resurgence with AAV and viral-vector based therapeutics, and that was a little bit surprising to us. Maybe earlier on this year, there were maybe some premature announcements by the press about the decline of adeno-associated virus (AAV), but we're seeing quite the opposite here. As such, I think the only way that you're going to be able to see these things is actually to be able to attend these conferences like ASGCT and to actually hear from what our customers are saying, as opposed to just believing what you read in popular press.

Is there anything else you want to share?

We're really excited about where Mission Bio is going. One of the things that we committed to last year was really opening up partnerships and opportunities to collaborate with external parties. The significant work that we're doing with University of Miami to collect the clinical utility data is one example of it. The second one is with Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT). And we have a couple more of these announcements that we're going to be making in the back half the year. But we would just open the door and open the invitation to other companies out there that would like to work with us to give us a ring. We're open for business.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Click here to view more coverage of the 2025 ASGCT Annual Meeting.