American epigenetic-editing firm based in Alameda, California. Co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel-prizewinning co-inventor of CRISPR. Its editing platform, ELXR, is a refinement of CRISPR that employs a smaller, nimbler enzyme called CasX rather than the standard Cas9. Benjamin Oakes, another co-founder, is the firm's chief executive.
Scribe's lead target is a gene called PCSK9, which encodes a liver protein that reduces the breakdown of cholesterol-rich low-density lipoproteins (LDLs). Too many LDLs in the bloodstream can lead to atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attacks and strokes, which kill around 17m people a year. Scribe's proposed treatment is an epigenetic edit that turns down the volume on PCSK9 and thus ups the destruction of LDLs—a one-off dose rather than the daily round of pills currently prescribed. Clinical trials were expected to begin in the summer of 2026.
The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.