The University of California San Diego and the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) , founded by Nobel laureate and CRISPR gene editing co-discoverer Jennifer Doudna, announced a new partnership today to jointly develop cutting-edge genomic tools for addressing large-scale challenges in health and the environment.
Since Doudna and her colleagues first developed CRISPR gene editing in 2012, it quickly transformed life science research around the world. Doudna founded the IGI in 2015 with the aim of translating the success of gene editing in the lab into practical solutions for large societal problems.
Initially formed as a partnership between UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco with a focus on using CRISPR in human health, the IGI expanded to include sustainable agriculture and climate change applications of genome editing, adding UC Davis as a partner. UC San Diego is joining as the IGI’s fourth UC partner campus, combining research strengths in environmental and marine science, engineering and computer science, and biomedical and life sciences to develop the next generation of genome-editing tools and applications.
“I’m thrilled that the IGI is now partnering with UC San Diego,” says Doudna. “The mission of the IGI is to develop solutions that can not only scale to meet the biggest challenges in health and climate, but to make solutions that are accessible to those who need them most. UC San Diego helps us expand that real-world impact.”
A Growing Collaboration
The relationship between UC San Diego and IGI research labs has been building over the past decade.
For several years, the IGI has been collaborating with UC San Diego researchers Joe Pogliano (professor, Department of Molecular Biology) and Kit Pogliano (dean and professor, School of Biological Sciences) on applied microbiology projects. They have worked with UC Berkeley-based Doudna, Savage and Cress labs on developing new therapies focusing on “jumbo phage” for antibiotic resistant bacterial infections as well as a novel defense strategy against viral infections .
“Harnessing the power of collaboration across the UC system, together with the extraordinary potential of genomic technologies, gives us an opportunity to tackle challenges in human health and the environment at a scale no single campus could achieve alone,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla. “We are excited to build on the collaborations already underway between UC San Diego, UC Berkeley and the IGI, and to bring together our complementary strengths to accelerate discovery and drive real-world impact. This partnership reflects the best of the UC system: working across campuses and disciplines to develop solutions to benefit communities in California and around the world.”
In 2023, UC San Diego researchers led by Joe Pogliano, Elizabeth Villa and others were awarded $10 million by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to explore the biomedical promise of jumbo phage as therapeutic agents . Also in 2023, the IGI received a $70 million gift through the Audacious Project to develop microbiome-editing tools and apply them to problems caused by microbes and microbiome imbalances including livestock methane emissions and inflammatory diseases like asthma. Joe Pogliano has recently joined this effort, and is currently working with Brady Cress to develop more efficient tools for genome editing across a wide breadth of microorganisms to expand the impact of this technology.
In the environmental arena, UC San Diego researchers in the Bier and Akbari labs have worked closely with the Marshall lab at UC Berkeley since 2018 to develop tools for combatting crop pests , managing disease-carrying mosquito populations, and developing safe protocols for environmental applications of genomic technologies.
“UC San Diego brings exceptional strengths across biological sciences, medicine, engineering, computation, environmental research and ocean science that align powerfully with the IGI’s mission,” said Dean Pogliano. “I am excited to help lead this campus-wide collaboration, building on years of productive partnership between UC San Diego and IGI scientists while creating new opportunities to develop genomic technologies that can move from fundamental discovery toward scalable solutions in human health, climate resilience and the environment.”
Future Prospects
In addition to the current collaborations, IGI’s Executive Director Brad Ringeisen foresees multiple areas of synergy.
“UC San Diego’s strengths in engineering, medical devices, environmental research and the microbiome complement IGI’s current research areas, and allow us to expand our societal impact in new ways,” says Ringeisen. “AI and machine learning are dramatically accelerating the speed of research in genomics, so we are very excited about applying the joint power of UC Berkeley and UC San Diego’s computer science prowess to large problems in human health and the environment.”
New joint projects of particular interest include interdisciplinary programs designed to bolster the climate resilience of our oceans and soils through innovative scalable solutions, and combining UC Berkeley’s biotechnology discovery engine with UC San Diego’s biomedical research and health system to improve the drug discovery pipeline for rapid translation across areas like antimicrobial resistance and neurodegenerative disease.