The University of California, San Diego and the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), founded by Nobel Prize winner and co-discoverer of CRISPR gene editing Jennifer Doudna, today announced a new partnership to jointly develop cutting-edge genomic tools to address large-scale challenges in health and the environment.
Since Doudna and colleagues first developed CRISPR gene editing in 2012, it has rapidly transformed life science research around the world. Doudna founded IGI in 2015 with the goal of translating the successes of gene editing in the lab into practical solutions to big social problems.
Originally founded as a partnership between the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco focused on the use of CRISPR in human health, IGI has expanded to include the application of genome editing to sustainable agriculture and climate change with the addition of UC Davis as a partner. UC San Diego joins IGI as its fourth UC partner campus, combining research strengths in environmental and marine sciences, engineering and computer science, and biomedical and life sciences to develop next-generation genome editing tools and applications.
IGI is pleased to partner with the University of California, San Diego. IGI’s mission is not only to develop scalable solutions to address the biggest challenges in health and climate, but also to make solutions available to those who need them most. UC San Diego will help you expand your real-world impact. ”
jennifer doudna
Expanding collaboration
The relationship between UC San Diego and the IGI Institute has been built over the past decade.
For several years, IGI has collaborated on applied microbiology projects with UC San Diego researchers Joe Pogliano, professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, and Kit Pogliano, dean and professor in the College of Biological Sciences. They have been working with the Doudna Institute, the Savage Institute, and the Kress Institute, all based at the University of California, Berkeley, to develop new treatments focused on “jumbo phages” for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, as well as new defense strategies against viral infections.
“By harnessing the power of collaboration across the University of California system, combined with the extraordinary potential of genomic technologies, we have an opportunity to address human health and environmental challenges at a scale that no single campus can achieve on its own,” said UC San Diego President Pradeep Khosla. “We are excited to build on the ongoing collaboration between UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, and IGI, bringing together our complementary strengths to accelerate discovery and drive real-world impact. This partnership reflects what is best at the UC system: collaborating across campuses and disciplines to develop solutions that benefit communities in California and around the world.”
In 2023, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, led by Joe Pogliano, Elizabeth Villa, and others, were awarded a $10 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to explore the biomedical potential of jumbo phages as therapeutic agents. Also in 2023, IGI received a $70 million donation through the Audacious Project to develop microbiome editing tools and apply them to problems caused by microbes and microbiome imbalances, including methane emissions in livestock and inflammatory diseases such as asthma. Joe Pogliano recently joined this effort and is currently collaborating with Brady Cress to develop more efficient tools for genome editing across a wide range of microorganisms to expand the impact of this technology.
In the environmental field, researchers from UC San Diego’s Beer and Akbari labs have worked closely with the UC Berkeley Marshall Lab since 2018 to develop tools to combat crop pests, manage disease-carrying mosquito populations, and develop safe protocols for applying genomic technologies to the environment.
“UC San Diego brings outstanding strengths across biological sciences, medicine, engineering, computing, environmental studies, and marine sciences that are strongly aligned with IGI’s mission,” said Dean Pogliano. “I am excited to lead this campus-wide collaboration, building on the long-standing and productive partnership between UC San Diego and IGI scientists while creating new opportunities to develop genomic technologies that can move from basic discoveries to scalable solutions in human health, climate resilience, and the environment.”
Future outlook
In addition to the current collaboration, IGI Executive Director Brad Ringeisen foresees synergies in multiple areas.
“UC San Diego’s strengths in engineering, medical devices, environmental research, and the microbiome complement IGI’s current research areas and allow us to expand our societal impact in new ways,” Ringeisen said. “AI and machine learning are dramatically accelerating the pace of genomics research, so we are very excited to be able to apply the combined power of UC Berkeley and UC San Diego computer science capabilities to big problems in human health and the environment.”
Particularly interesting new collaborative projects include an interdisciplinary program aimed at strengthening the climate resilience of oceans and soils through innovative scalable solutions, and combining UC Berkeley’s biotechnology discovery engine with UC San Diego’s biomedical research and health systems to improve drug discovery pipelines for rapid translation across areas such as antimicrobial resistance and neurodegenerative diseases.
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University of California, San Diego
