The University of California will soon be granted a potentially valuable patent on the revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, according to a document filed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Friday.
The decision to grant the patent could further fuel a rivalry between the university and the Broad Institute, a biological and genomic research center affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University that also holds patents on CRISPR.
Patent rights to CRISPR could eventually be worth billions of dollars because the technology could revolutionize the treatment of diseases, crop engineering and other areas.