Feng Zhang

A series of interviews and lab visits by The Daily Californian show what it’s like to work inside some of UC Berkeley's most high-level labs.

The Anna Head Alumnae Hall at UC Berkeley was packed with more than 200 attendees Wednesday evening as Feng Zhang, professor of biomedical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-discoverer of the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology, spoke on campus about the revolutionary capacities of the biological mechanism.

The U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled there was no interference between the patents requested by Broad Institute and the University of California regarding CRISPR technology, prompting the UC system to consider further legal steps to secure patent rights over the use of CRISPR-Cas9 in all types of cells and organisms.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Caribou Biosciences, a startup co-founded by UC Berkeley researcher Jennifer Doudna, intellectual property rights for developments in CRISPR gene-editing technology Tuesday.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed Monday to decide whether a UC Berkeley research team will be awarded the rights to the groundbreaking CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which could be worth billions of dollars and serve as the foundation for the burgeoning field of gene editing.

Disagreement persists between scientists at UC Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over the disputed patent rights to a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 potentially worth billions of dollars.