Over the summer 2025, we invested £2m in Forge Genetics, a University of Nottingham spinout with a novel genetic engineering platform to rival CRISPR.
Since 2013, labs around the world have relied on CRISPR-Cas9 for precise genome editing, enabling scientists to better understand diseases and develop new life-changing treatments. While undoubtedly opening the door for huge advancements, this technology has proved far from perfect. One major challenge is accuracy. CRISPR systems may result in changes to DNA at unintended locations, with these unplanned edits potentially causing harmful consequences such as increased cancer risk or dangerous immune responses. Beyond human applications, the inherent toxicity of CRISPR systems can also cause cell death in some important strains of bacteria used in industrial applications. With the latter in mind, Forge Genetics set about finding a solution.
Driven by demand from the commercial partners they worked with at the Synthetic Biology Research Centre, the Forge Genetics’ team set about inventing an entirely new gene editing tool to avoid the accuracy, toxicity and intellectual property challenges of licensing CRISPR. As part of their research, they developed Forge Editing, a rapid and highly effective way of delivering high-precision knockouts and insertions into previously ‘hard-to-engineer’ bacteria strains.
In the first 18 months of commercialising the tool in this market, the team won over £1.3m of contracts from leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Not only are customers enamoured with the cutting-edge science, but the Forge Genetics’ founding team clearly have an impressive reputation around the world. By combining their exceptional scientific expertise with their deep knowledge of the market, they are able to quickly find solutions to problems that customers had long thought impossible to solve. With more funding behind them, Forge Genetics are now scaling up and expanding the team to meet the growing demand coming from this existing market.
As well as solidifying their place as a world leader in ‘hard-to-engineer’ bacteria strains, this investment will also enable Forge Genetics to enter a new phase of growth and impact. With an expanded R&D team, exciting research can accelerate in adapting the Forge Editing technique for mammalian cells. This represents a huge potential market that could offer life-changing benefits for patients in the prevention and cure of disease. The first CRISPR-based therapy, Casgevy, hit the US and UK markets in 2023 for treating sickle cell disease. With significant potential side effects, limited long-term data and an extremely high cost of over $1.6m per patient, many individuals are unable to access treatment. By developing a safer alternative to existing gene-editing tools, Forge Genetics hopes to improve uptake of this exciting new technology. With over 1,500 cell and gene therapies currently undergoing clinical trials, and many more in development, this market provides Forge Genetics with a huge opportunity for growth and impact.
From expansion in the bacteria strain development market to translation into mammalian cells, it is clear that Forge Genetics have a huge array of opportunities ahead of them and we are delighted to be joining them on this journey.