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World-first CRISPR gene-editing therapy approved in UK

World-first CRISPR gene-editing therapy approved in UK

The UK has become the first country in the world to approve CRISPR gene-editing therapy. The landmark biotech decision involves the treatment of two specific blood dieseases, but also opens the door for the use of the technology in treating many other genetic disorders. 

Regulators approved the use of CRISPR for the treatment of inherited diseases sickle-cell anaemia and β-thalassaemia on Thursday. The former affects the shape of red blood cells of 20 million people worldwide and can cause debilitating pain.

People with the latter need to receive regular blood transfusions to counteract a reduced production of haemoglobin, which in turn reduces levels of oxygen in the body. About 80 to 90 million people carry some version of β-thalassaemia worldwide. 

CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. These are repetitive DNA sequences in the genomes of organisms such as bacteria. The bacteria transcribe these double stranded DNA elements to single-stranded RNA upon a viral infection. This then guides what is called a nuclease — a protein that “cuts” DNA — to the viral DNA to protect the bacteria.



CRISPR therapy is like precise genetic surgery. Doctors can perform it inside the body by injecting a guide RNA system that matches what is going wrong in the DNA code. This system carries the protein that acts like scissors (Cas9) and cuts out the faulty bit of code. The cell can then rewrite the code as it fixes the cut. The “surgery” can also happen outside of the body, where doctors edit the cells first and then put them back. 

Company founded by Nobel Prize winner

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The approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) follows promising results from a clinical trial developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston, Massachusetts, and CRISPR Therapeutics in Zug, Switzerland. CRISPR Therapeutics was co-founded by Emanuelle Charpentier, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020 for repurposing CRISPR into the tool for gene editing. 

The specific product from the trials is Casgevy. While the treatment itself is a one-off, patients may need to spend some time in the hospital for related procedures, such as preparing the bone marrow to receive the edited cells.



“Patients may need to spend at least a month in a hospital facility while the treated cells take up residence in the bone marrow and start to make red blood cells with the stable form of haemoglobin,” the MHRA said in a statement. 

The companies behind Casgevy have yet to disclose the price of the therapy. However, it will most likely be somewhere between $1mn and $2mn, something that will naturally limit accessibility. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is reportedly also reviewing the treatment for both diseases.

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DeepMind says its new AI system is the world’s most accurate 10-day weather forecaster

A new AI model from Google DeepMind is the world’s most accurate 10-day global weather forecasting system, according to the London-based lab.

Named GraphCast, the model promises medium-range weather forecasts of “unprecedented accuracy.” In a study published today, GraphCast was shown to be more precise and faster than the industry gold standard for weather simulation, the High-Resolution Forecast (HRES).

The system also predicted extreme weather further into the future than was previously possible.

These insights were analysed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), an intergovernmental organisation that produces the HRES.

A live version of GraphCast was deployed on the ECMWF website. In September, the system accurately predicted around nine days in advance that Hurricane Lee would make landfall in Nova Scotia.

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In contrast, traditional forecasting methods only spotlighted Nova Scotia about six days beforehand. They also provided less consistent predictions of the time and location of landfall.

GraphCast mapped both the trajectory and speeds of Cyclone Lee. Credit: Google DeepMind.

Intriguingly, GraphCast can identify dangerous weather events without being trained to find them. After integrating a simple cyclone tracker, the model predicted cyclone movements more accurately than the HRES method.

Such data could save lives and livelihoods. As the climate becomes more extreme and unpredictable, fast and accurate forecasts will provide increasingly vital insights for disaster planning.

Matthew Chantry, a machine learning coordinator at the ECMWF, believes his industry has reached an inflection point.

“There’s probably more work to be done to create reliable operational products, but this is likely the beginning of a revolution,” Chantry said at a press briefing.

Meteorological organisations, he added, had previously expected AI to be most useful when merged with physics. But recent breakthroughs show that machine learning can also directly forecast the weather.

How GraphCast works

Conventional weather forecasts are based on intricate physics equations. These are then adapted into algorithms that run on supercomputers.

The process can be painstaking. It also requires specialist knowledge and vast computing resources.

GraphCast harnesses a different technique. The model combines machine learning with Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), an architecture that’s adept at processing spatially structured data.

To learn the causes and effects that determine weather changes, the system was trained on decades of weather information.

Traditional approaches are also incorporated. The ECMWF supplied GraphCast with training data from around 40 years of weather reanalysis, which encompassed monitoring from satellites, radars and weather stations.

When there are gaps in the observations, physics-based prediction methods fill them in. The result is a detailed history of global weather. GraphCast uses these lessons from the past to predict the future. 

Predictions of surface temperatures will prove important as heatwaves become more common. Credit: Google DeepMind

GraphCast makes predictions at a spatial resolution of 0.25-degrees latitude/longitude.

To put that into perspective, imagine the Earth divided into a million grid points. At each point, the model predicts five Earth-surface variable and six atmospheric variables. Together, they cover the planet’s entire atmosphere in 3D over 37 levels.

The variables encompass temperature, wind, humidity, precipitation, and sea-level pressure. They also incorporate geopotential — the gravitational potential energy of a unit mass, at a particular location, relative to mean sea level.

In tests, the results were impressive. GraphCast significantly outperformed the most accurate operational deterministic systems on 90% of 1,380 test targets.

The disparity was even starker in the troposphere — the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere and the location of most weather phenomena. In this region, GraphCast outperformed HRES on 99.7% of the test variables for future weather.

Graphs showing GraphCast performs better than HRES
For both cyclone movements (left) and flood risks of atmospheric rivers (right), GraphCast was more accurate than HRES Credit: Google DeepMind

GraphCast is also highly efficient. A 10-day forecast takes under a minute to complete on a single Google TPU v4 machine.

A conventional approach, by comparison, can take hours of computation in a supercomputer with hundreds of machines.

AI’s future in weather forecasting

Despite the promising early results, GraphCast could still benefit from further refinement. In the cyclone predictions, for instance, the model proved accurate at tracking movements, but less effective at measuring intensity.

Gentry is keen to see how much this can improve.

“At the moment, that’s an area where GraphCast and machine learning models still lag a little bit behind physical models… I’m hopeful that this can be an area for further improvement, but this shows that it’s still a nascent technology,” he said.

Those improvements could now come from anywhere, because DeepMind has open-sourced the model code. Global organisations and individuals alike can now experiment with GraphCast and add their own improvements.

The potential applications are, ironically, unpredictable. The forecasts could, for instance, inform renewable energy production and air traffic routing. But they could also be applied to tasks that haven’t even been imagined.

“There’s a lot of downstream use cases for weather forecasts,” said Peter Battaglia, Google DeepMind’s research director. “And we’re not aware of all of those.”

DeepMind says its new AI system is the world’s most accurate 10-day weather forecaster Read More »

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Climate tech is set to boom. This VC explains why it’s ripe for investment

Climate tech is receiving a proportionally larger share of what is, undeniably, a muted venture capital investment environment. VC and private equity investment in the sector has, thus far in 2023, fallen by 40% — just as the evidence of the need for more money for potentially planet-saving technology is becoming increasingly insurmountable. 

However, the total amount for all venture and equity investment was down 50.2% year-over-year. So, while climate tech is far from escaping the current economic downturn unscathed, it is faring… not as horribly as other tech segments. 

Still, the news earlier this autumn that leading Dutch climate tech VC SET Ventures had raised €200mn for its fourth fund — doubling the size of its previous one — was particularly uplifting. The fund will invest in 20 to 25 European companies that are innovating the energy transition. 

TNW sat down for a conversation with SET Ventures’ Managing Partner, Anton Arts, to see what it takes to be a venture capitalist in climate tech, the enormous economic opportunities arising from our move toward net-zero, and how startups garner favour in an increasingly difficult investment landscape. 

“It’s a bit of a funnel,” Arts explains when discussing the process of selecting which companies to back among an avalanche of pitches. “The first thing we ask is: does this fit into our scope?” 

Does it move the impact needle, and is there a market opportunity? 

SET has a clear idea about what it wants to invest in — digital technologies that advance a carbon free energy system. “So a major question that we try to answer whenever a proposal comes to us is, how does this affect the energy system of the future?”

Arts adds that this is a much more narrow focus than what someone thinking about climate tech in a more generic way would have. However, as energy is linked — directly or indirectly — to 72% of global emissions, trying to address those emissions is a “more than large enough” problem: “We also ask ourselves, does this really move the needle in terms of impact?” 

“The second area that we then focus on is really some of the same questions that all VCs try to answer. Do we think this is a fantastic founder team? Is there a market opportunity that is large enough? Can you truly develop a differentiated and unique offering in that market? And, ultimately, is it going to be financially rewarding to take on that opportunity?” 

Flight to quality increases VC competition

After having found an exciting investment opportunity, the process then becomes somewhat of a two-way street. Sure, there is less capital up for grabs as the funding optimism of the past few years has waned (unless you are in generative AI, that is) — but the startups that meet the more stringent criteria can instead have their pick among suitors. 

“In the current market, there is also a flight to quality, which means that the bar for what is a great company is raised. But for those companies that meet the bar, there is intense competition between investors in order to fund that opportunity,” Arts states, adding that there is also a founder who has to make a decision which investors to go with.

Additionally, Arts says it is a healthy market dynamic, and one that is influenced to a great deal by the fact that climate tech has moved from a relative niche from an investment perspective, to much more of a mainstream market. 

Solving problems — why this, why now? 

Another question that always comes up, Arts says, is “what problem is this solving? Why this, but also, why now? Because many of these problems are not new. What has changed in the past few years that now there is a solution to an existing problem that wasn’t there before? Maybe it is the technology, maybe it is the people, etcetera.” 

And finally, Arts says, as a VC, you have to “skate to where the puck is going,” meaning you have to be willing to make a bet on something that the rest of the world hasn’t seen yet. Or, as he puts it — “what do you want me to believe that other people aren’t believing yet?” 

When thinking about investing with environmental or social impact as a criteria, the question inevitably arises as to whether there are compromises in terms of return on investment versus doing a good thing for the planet. Arts would argue, perhaps unsurprisingly, that not necessarily — and definitely not when it comes to energy. 

“We think that this transition to the energy system of the future is really a generational opportunity in magnitude,” he states.  

Clean technologies will outgrow oil in revenue

Indeed, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a new energy economy is emerging, pushed forward by policy action, technology innovation, and the increasing urgency of the need to tackle climate change. This, the IEA says, provides a “huge market opportunity” for clean technologies. 

The agency estimates that, if the world gets on track for net-zero emissions by mid-century, the annual market opportunity for wind turbines, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, electrolysers, and fuel cells will grow tenfold to $1.2 trillion by 2050. That means that those five segments collectively would be larger than today’s oil industry and its associated revenues. 

And that’s “just” the hardware stuff. The new energy economy will also require digital tools to manage the complex interactions and relationships between things like electricity, fuels, and storage markets. Managing platforms and data will become increasingly important parts of energy efficiency and clean energy innovation. 

“What people might need to be reminded of is that you can’t always predict timelines. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be longer. Sometimes you see changes happening very quickly. And for us as investors, we think that if you look at the past, then, of course, we’ve seen a lot of success in software businesses, and, for instance, business-to-consumer internet businesses. 

“We think the opportunity of the next decade is really shifting to climate tech as a category, and we are absolutely convinced that we will see similar types of return expectations, as we’ve seen in the tech business in the past.”

One of the reasons for that, Arts says, is that more and more talent is moving into climate tech, having perhaps previously been successful in other industries and looking to make more of a difference. And, a chain is starting to emerge all the way from early stage investment to very large growth equity funds. SET invests across Europe at the Series A stage, but with the ability to keep supporting portfolio companies through multiple rounds of financing.

From physical assets to digital solutions

Essentially, SET Ventures believes in three things: that the world is changing very fast, and that the energy transition is the biggest trend driving markets in the next decades; that there is too much emphasis on miracle technologies that exist only in the lab and not enough on the business models and applications that will scale what’s right in front of us; and, from a systems perspective, value migration will move from only physical assets, to the collection of digital solutions that together form the energy system.

Among the startups and scaleups in SET’s portfolio are Dutch companies Sensorfact and Energyworx. The former helps clients reduce industrial energy waste through plug and play hardware, smart software, and dedicated consultants. Founded in 2016, Sensorfact has already scaled to 1,300+ customers in over 40 countries and identified more than 112+ GWh of energy savings. Energyworx is a SaaS provider for energy providers to ingest and manage data across the entire energy chain. 

Another example of SET’s investment strategy is Germany’s Instagrid. The company has built a 20kg 230V portable power system for professionals to work off-grid. On a full charge (2.5 hours), an industrial vacuum cleaner can run for 105 minutes, you can brew 1,200+ cups of professional catering espressos, and high quality projectors can run on full brightness for five hours. 

SET’s latest fund is backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF), Triodos Energy Transition Europe Fund, a.s.r., and Amsterdam-based Carbon Equity

Climate tech is set to boom. This VC explains why it’s ripe for investment Read More »

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140-year-old ocean heat tech could supply islands with limitless energy

A UK-based startup is looking to breathe new life into a century-old technology that could power tropical island nations with virtually limitless, consistent, renewable energy. 

Known as ocean thermal energy conversion or ‘OTEC,’ the technology was first invented in 1881 by French physicist Jacques Arsene d’Arsonval. He discovered that the temperature difference between sun-warmed surface water and the cold depths of the ocean could be harnessed to generate electricity.  

OTEC systems transfer heat from warm surface waters to evaporate a low-boiling point fluid like ammonia, creating steam that drives a turbine to produce electricity. As the vapour cools and condenses in contact with cold seawater pumped from the ocean’s depths, it completes the energy cycle. 

How it works:

Another requirement is accommodation for both staff and visitors. A new hotel with around 250 beds and a visitor centre is under development, which aims to attract both birdwatchers and rocket fans. The accommodation also provides a supplementary income stream — a vital need for SaxaVord.

5. Keep the funding coming

Spaceports are not your typical investment. Business plans are offbeat, customer bases are nascent, and returns are uncertain. 

Launches are also fraught with risk, as Spaceport Cornwall recently showed. In January, the British site attempted the first orbital launch from Western Europe — but the Virgin Orbit flight failed dramatically. Just months later, Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy.

In addition to the common challenges, SaxaVord has had to overcome another barrier. Unlike most spaceports, the project has received little public funding. Instead, the site largely relies on private investments. 

“We could hit the moon from here.

Hammond points to the model’s benefits. He acknowledges that SaxaVord’s funding plan initially attracted scepticism, but the approach seems to have paid off.

“Because the whole industry is used to being government-led, people would say that if the government’s not giving you any money then you’re not real,” he says. 

“We had to get over that. And now, we are the most real of all the spaceports — because it’s private money. Because if we’re spending our own money, we’re a damn sight more careful about our decisions.”

That doesn’t mean that it’s been cheap. In May, SaxaVord CEO Frank Strang told a parliamentary committee that his company had spent nearly £30mn (€34.6mn) on the spaceport. He added that the project had recently secured a £139mn (€160mn) debt facility.

Three months later, the BBC reported that the venture had secured £20mn (€23mn) in equity and £10mn (€11.5mn) in debt and loans, along with a large development bond.

Launch operators have provided a crucial source of funding. Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), which has secured exclusive access to one launch pad, said the deal included a “double-digit million-pound investment” in SaxaVord.

Jörn Spurmann, Chief Commercial Officer at RFA, and SaxaVord Spaceport CEO Frank Strang at the launch stool
Jörn Spurmann, Chief Commercial Officer at RFA (left) and SaxaVord CEO Frank Strang at the first vertical orbital rocket stool in Western Europe. Credit: RFA

Private investors have made another vital contribution. They include Anders Holch Povlsen, a Danish billionaire and the largest landowner in northern Scotland. Povlsen had previously raised an environmental objection to another spaceport planned for near his land in Sutherland. 

Supplementary income streams add another cash injection. As well as the launch service, there’s the aforementioned hotel, plus support and data services.

“It’s providing something of a one-stop shop; they just come to us and they get everything when they arrive,” Hammond says.

6. Start the countdown

A final piece in the SaxaVord jigsaw is the spaceport license. According to Hammond, the project is currently at the final stages of the application process, which involves an array of time-consuming details.

“It’s like when you buy a house,” he says. “That last bit takes bloody forever, and there are lots of little things that come out of the woodwork.”

The next step will be getting those rockets in the sky. Alongside RFA, SaxaVord has attracted launch partners including American aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, Edinburgh-based rocket firm Skyrora, and HyImpulse, a spinoff from the German Aerospace Centre. 

Some could even fly before the spaceport license arrives. British aviation regulators have pledged to permit suborbital launches within an altitude of 50 km and using engines below a set size.

On this basis, HyImpulse has permission to attempt the maiden voyage of its SR75 rocket from Unst. The launch can take place between December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024, European Spaceflight reports.

SaxaVord hopes to make it happen before the end of the year. The first orbital launch, meanwhile, has been earmarked for next summer. If all goes to plan, the spaceport will host four to five launches next year, across both orbital and suborbital trajectories.

The Hyimpulse SR75 rocket on a launchpad
HyImpulse’s SR75 has already been extensively tested at SaxaVord. Credit: HyImpulse

Despite the progress, there are further obstacles ahead. There are still facilities to build and a license to obtain. Some tests, such as flight tracking trials, can only be passed when satellites are launched into space. Only then will the spaceport have accomplished its initial mission. Nonetheless, Hammond is already dreaming of the stars.

“We could hit the moon from our location,” he says. “But we are really an enabler for everything else.”

Around his office on Unst, the development is progressing as we speak. Hammond still has revolution on his mind.

“We had the Industrial Revolution and the digital revolution — this could be a revolution of access to space.”

How to build a spaceport Read More »

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How this Berlin startup deploys AI to make preventative healthcare accessible

There are plenty of conversations around how AI can progress healthcare. And indeed, it has numerous applications in the form of diagnostics and accelerated drug discovery. However, wouldn’t it be even better if artificial intelligence could help prevent us from getting sick in the first place?

Anyone who has ever tried to get past (or even to) a GP in the Netherlands or any other European country feeling the healthcare capacity crunch knows that it can be a process leaving you almost as drained as being unwell itself. Often, getting access to proper care can become a matter of being able to advocate for yourself, at times across language barriers. 

HealthCaters is a female-founded startup based in Berlin that wants to change the status quo of healthcare gatekeeping. Its founders say they are not simply looking to make money and grow the company. Rather, they want to change the future of preventative medicine — in a way that is accessible and affordable for all. And when speaking to its two co-founders, Yale-educated Dr Lily Kruse and ex-VC and former head of business development at medical travel platform Medigo Tanya Eliseeva, I feel that I believe them. 

“I was a heart surgeon in the US. And for me, the most important thing was to help people and to make sure that they are healthy. And I realised quickly that medicine is not so much about that. It’s more about treating people who are already sick,” Dr Kruse says. 

“But if you think about it, there’s so many people that are getting sick, but are not sick yet. It was quite emotional to have somebody on the operating table, knowing that this could have been prevented.”

Preventative health beyond statistics

According to the WHO, by 2030, the proportion of total global deaths due to chronic diseases (or noncommunicable diseases, NCDs) is expected to reach 70% — up from 61% in 2005. Apart from the tremendous individual suffering they inflict, lifestyle-influenced diseases, such as heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes, are also a huge burden on health services worldwide. 

Considering that in 2011, Harvard Business School predicted that NCDs would cost society more than $30 trillion over the coming two decades, it is baffling that national healthcare plans hardly, if ever, take preventive measures into account. 

Hoping to function as an extension of the existing healthcare system, HealthCaters has developed what they call DIY health screenings, using a portable testing station and an accompanying app. Taking around 30 minutes, the system guides the user through a series of steps to measure things such as blood pressure, cholesterol, lung function, heart rate, kidney and liver health, metabolic health, etc. 

HealthCaters portable testing station
The screening takes about 30 minutes. Credit: HealthCaters

A proprietary algorithm then analyses the results and provides a comprehensive risk assessment, including probability and factors impacting each risk. The app also provides practical advice on how to mitigate said risks, based on scientific evidence. 

“It’s not just a sheet of different values, and then a thumbs up, like you’re okay or you’re not okay, and that’s it,” Eliseeva says. “We put together a very comprehensive risk assessment that allows you to understand what your actual risks are. What do I need to pay attention to? And for every risk that we identify, we show the probability and the factors that impact that risk.” 

Unlike the doctor’s office, or by employing the services of a test lab, the user doesn’t just receive the numbers, but the algorithm also takes lifestyle into account to determine what the specific numbers mean to each individual in terms of risk. 

“Our goal is preventative medicine that is not just statistics,” Eliseevea continues. “It’s not about having a 10% chance of developing something. It’s more like ‘what do I have to care for, in order for me to stay healthy?’” 

‘Explosive demand’ from corporates

 HealthCaters offers their services to corporates that can set up health screening days for employees with the portable boxes and access to the app with personalised plans. Customers include the likes of IBM, WeWork, and Barmenia. Furthermore, the startup just opened up its first centre for the public in Berlin (prices start at €39). 

“We are seeing explosive demand from corporates right now,” Eliseeva says, adding that the company signed three new clients last month — no small thing for a startup its size. 

“Usually we do it in the framework of a health day or health week, which means we go there and we set up, and employees can book slots. They come to the health case, and they can do the screening themselves,” Dr Kruse explains. “So it’s completely self-managed.” 

Sometimes, the process is arranged by an insurance company that acts as the intermediary, which also allows corporations to lower premiums for employee insurance. 

Growing a team that understands tech for health

While any startup in preventative or diagnostic healthcare over the past few years may have had to battle the ghost of Theranos in the minds of investors, HealthCaters recently secured $1.2mn in seed funding led by Barmenia Next Strategies. They will use the funds to expand the team, both on the tech and operational business side, as well as “double down” on the product.

“It’s so important to make sure that there is a strong team behind your tech that understands at what point and how to take all this technology [generative AI] in, and to implement it without jeopardising the actual essence of the product,” Eliseeva says. “Because it’s not tech for tech, right? It’s tech for health.” 

Lack of accessibility increases anxiety

The company has also held pop-up events throughout Europe. Circling back to the Dutch healthcare system we referenced earlier in this article, when HealthCaters held an event in Amsterdam earlier this year, the audience was in parts unexpected. 

“You always think that out-of-pocket expenses for health care is something that is upper-middle class territory. But many of the people who came to us were taxi drivers,” Eliseeva retells the experience.



“And they said, ‘Well, I tried to have a doctor’s appointment, they asked me to wait for three months. When I finally went, it was over in literally two minutes. They looked at me and said — you’re okay, why are you here?’ They said that it makes them very anxious, and this word, anxious, is repeated by so many people we talk to [in relation to healthcare].” 

The company has plans to further integrate the product with wearables and data such as genetic screenings and family history. With so much personal medical data being involved, I cannot help but ask about privacy and security. Eliseeva highlights that it was not something she and Dr Kruse would ever cut corners on as it is a “cornerstone” of the product. 

“Before we hired a single person, we already asked ourselves, how are we going to deal with data security? We even interviewed on the basis of what they would do with this data,” she stated, further adding that the company runs its own trial audits, and is passing on every single criteria. 

How this Berlin startup deploys AI to make preventative healthcare accessible Read More »