Entrepreneur Cathy Tie’s company Manhattan Genomics will work on methods to edit the genomes of human embryos. Credit: Caitlyn Gaurano
Cathy Tie left university to found her first biotechnology company at the age of 18. In the 11 years since, she has launched several more. Her first company helped genetic-testing firms to interpret their results; her second provides digital health-care services.
Her latest venture, which announced some of its first key hires on 30 October, veers out of the mainstream. Tie, who has called herself Biotech Barbie, sometimes refers to her latest company as the Manhattan Project — the name used for the US effort to develop an atomic bomb in the 1940s — and now focuses her entrepreneurial ambitions on a controversial goal: altering the genome of human embryos to prevent genetic disorders.
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“We have a duty to patients with incurable, debilitating diseases,” says Tie. “A majority of Americans are in support of this technology.”
Plenty of scientists, however, are worried. Manhattan Genomics, the official name of her latest company, based in New York City was launched this summer. Tie co-founded the firm with Eriona Hysolli, former head of biological sciences at Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas, Texas firm focused on de-extincting species. Another company called Preventive in South San Francisco, California, announced on 30 October that it also intends to explore gene editing in human embryos.
So far, neither company has revealed the details of its scientific plans, such as which diseases it will target, and which techniques it will use. Tie says Manhattan Genomics will conduct extensive research and safety testing before attempting to create gene-edited babies. Among the new employees announced this week are a bioethicist and two scientists with expertise in non-human primate reproductive biology — skills that would be needed for testing the safety of embryo editing.
Even so, some researchers say it is much too early to consider commercializing gene-editing technologies for human embryos — a process that carries added safety risks and ethical quandaries compared with the gene-editing therapies that are currently on the market to treat blood conditions in children and adults.
“The bar for safety is so, so, so, so high,” says Alexis Komor, a biochemist at the University of California San Diego, who studies gene-editing technologies. “We’re definitely not there yet.”
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