“I think this system levels the playing field for zinc fingers and CRISPR,” said Kim, who is also a professor of molecular genetics and computer science at U of T. “CRISPR is very established for fundamental science, but our system has many advantages for applications in living systems, in particular, that zinc fingers are human proteins and would be safer as injected drugs.”

The ZFDesign technology can also generate many different proteins that do the same thing, offering more options for moving treatments toward the clinic. “Our program can identify the right grouping of zinc fingers for any modification, making this type of gene editing faster than ever before,” commented Ichikawa.