O U R S C I E N CE
Broad-spectrum antiviral therapies do not exist, hindering our ability to respond to viral outbreaks and pandemics. We need new approaches to treat these diseases, as existing therapeutics are very narrow-spectrum and take many years to develop. Carver Biosciences is a startup company developing CRISPR-based therapies for RNA viruses that infect humans. Carver’s approach is a programmable, platform technology that could offer a generalizable solution for treating many viruses, as targeting is dictated by a guide RNA sequence. The underlying technology, CARVER, was developed by founder Cameron Myhrvold and was published in Molecular Cell in 2019.
O U R G O A L S
Carver is using Cas13 to directly target and degrade the RNA of respiratory viruses leveraging not only Cas13 but two decades of experience in oligonucleotide therapeutics.
Influenza A kills tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands world-wide. We will be targeting influenza A virus to develop Carver’s platform and therapeutics against multiple strains of flu virus.
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Other respiratory RNA viruses, such as Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19) also represent a significant need and we will be expanding Carver’s platform to target those viruses as well.
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