The grant, stated plainly. On May 4, 2021, CRISPR Therapeutics AG was issued US10995328B2, "Materials and methods for treatment of autosomal dominant cone-rod dystrophy." The CPC tags — C12N 9/22 (nucleases), C12N 15/11 (regulatory nucleic acids), C12N 2800/80 (assays for gene-modifying agents) — describe a target-specific editing approach for a specific inherited retinal disease.
Why an event-driven desk notes it: target-specific grants like this map directly onto individual pipeline programs. They are the IP that defines what a company exclusively owns for a given indication, and they are the assets that catalyst-driven business value attaches to as a program advances toward and through the clinic.
The disciplined read: a target-specific editing grant is an exclusivity claim on editing a particular gene for a particular disease — not a clinical result. The business stakes ride on whether the program produces data, and that is reported in trial disclosures, not in the patent.
What the grant does not say: nothing about efficacy or safety in patients, nothing about an approval, and nothing about the company's freedom to operate around foundational CRISPR claims held by others. Those are separate, distinct records.
The takeaway: when tracking a gene-editing pipeline program by program, the target-specific grants are the IP markers worth naming. CRISPR Therapeutics' May 2021 cone-rod dystrophy grant is a concrete, dated example tied to a discrete inherited-disease program.