CRISPR Design Company Desktop Genetics Gets Boost from Illumina

By Bio-IT World Staff

December 10, 2015 | Illumina has made an investment in Desktop Genetics (DTG), a company that provides software for the design of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing complexes. Illumina’s investment, the value of which has not been disclosed, follows a private round of venture capital funding for DTG, which has launched multiple ways to access its services and is now expanding its sales and marketing department.

DTG’s flagship product is a platform called DESKGEN, where users can choose the genes they want to edit in a particular cell line, and receive a series of options for CRISPR libraries that target their chosen gene regions. DESKGEN also predicts the efficiency of those CRISPR complexes, and their risks of producing off-target cuts elsewhere in the genome. The platform is based in large part on gUIDEbook, a CRISPR design tool that DTG launched in partnership with Horizon Discovery this March.

DTG also recently partnered with Transcriptic, a “robotics laboratory” based in Menlo Park, California. The partnership allows customers to design CRISPR experiments with DESKGEN, then have their chosen libraries synthesized and their experiments conducted remotely in Transcriptic’s automated lab space.

While Illumina’s investment is not tied to a specific program at DTG, in a press release, Illumina anticipated “a particular focus on integration with NGS pipelines.” Connecting DESKGEN directly to next-generation sequencing platforms, like those offered by Illumina, could provide customers with more rapid target selection, as well as backend validation of gene editing experiments.