Scientist on Baby KJ team launches new CRISPR startup

In between bites of thin, crispy slices of pizza at Berkeley’s Pizzeria da Laura, gene editing researcher Fyodor Urnov and venture capitalist Johnny Hu began hatching a plan for a different kind of CRISPR company.

It was spring 2024 and Urnov, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, had been lecturing and writing about how CRISPR could treat scores of patients with ultra-rare mutations — if only regulators and companies acted accordingly. Hu, who got his Ph.D. in gene editing before becoming a principal at Menlo Ventures, wanted to help.

“Johnny said — I’ll never forget this — ‘how realistic is any of this?’” Urnov recalled. “I looked at Johnny and said, ‘look, for me, the question goes right over to you. You and I both agree that, technologically, we can do this, but how do you build this into a company that actually succeeds?’”