Who We Are #2

Before Thanksgiving break in 2004, as postdoctoral fellows at Duke University, Jeff Smith, Ph.D. and Derek Jantz, Ph.D. were excited about a new discovery – one that would lead to the foundation of the proprietary ARCUS genome editing platform and the founding of Precision BioSciences in 2006.  Some of the first ARCUS editing successes were in corn, soybeans, cotton, and other crop plants. That heritage lives and thrives today in Elo Life Systems, an independent company focused on food and agriculture. Precision BioSciences completed the spin-out of Elo in December 2021.

At the time, gene editing as a clinical intervention to treat – let alone cure – diseases was practically science fiction. But rapid advances and breakthroughs mean that moving from cell culture to the clinic is now an exciting reality – and Precision has quietly built what is arguably the leading gene editing platform paving the way for the next frontier of therapeutic gene editing therapies.

Following its agreement to license out its lead allogeneic CAR T program to Imugene in August 2023, Precision has focused its full attention to leveraging the core features of ARCUS for differentiated in vivo gene editing programs. The company is prepared to capitalize on the utility of ARCUS to produce a profound impact on diseases that are best treated by therapeutic gene insertion or excision of large defective gene sequences.