IDT product expansion helps screen new drug candidates

Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) has expanded customization options for its unique custom CRISPR gRNA libraries product, a move that will help researchers screen for new drug candidates.

Alt-R Custom CRISPR gRNA Libraries are designed and manufactured by IDT in a range of sizes and formulation combinations to provide customers with enhanced solutions, according to a press release. They are adaptable for alternatives CRISPR systems such as Cas12a, Cas13 and prime editing enzymes.

“With CRISPR screening emerging as a productive and promising tool for drug discovery, our goal for widening access to our customization offerings was to leverage our decades of experience creating high-quality RNAs to enable a broader range of researchers to accelerate their drug discovery projects and isolate critical targets sooner,” said Mark Behlke, chief scientific officer at IDT, in a statement.

CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) are repetitive DNA sequences observed in bacteria and is critical to the genome editing field. With CRISPR, it’s “easy to disrupt a targeted gene” and the method has “profoundly changed” biomedical research in cells and organisms, according to The Jackson Laboratory.

The expanded gRNA customization options will accelerate drug discovery and functional genomics projects, the release said. The custom arrayed synthetic gRNA libraries are chemically modified on IDT’s proprietary, high-fidelity RNA synthesis manufacturing platform.

IDT’s CRISPR gRNA libraries serves as the foundational component in a new, cutting-edge human phenome project that is leveraging more than 100,000 IDT custom CRISPR gRNAs.

In August, the company launched the xGen Monkeypox Amplicon Panel, a library prep solution that supports the genotyping of the monkeypox virus within a sample.

IDT is based in Coralville.