CHEMICAL REGULATION
China increases pressure on producers Chemical companies face new restrictions ahead of a key government meeting Delegates vote at the 2012 National Congress of
C R E D I T: CA R LO S BA R R I A /R E U TE RS / NEWS CO M (DE L EGAT ES ); E L I GO B I O S CI E N CE (CO FO U N DE RS)
Chinese authorities are tightening controls on chemical shipping ahead of a big Communist Party meeting that takes place later this month in Beijing. The new measures will add to the pressure that chemical and pharmaceutical producers have faced in China throughout 2017. Authorities in the coastal province of Jiangsu have ordered companies to suspend the shipment of chemicals considered dangerous in the second half of October. At that time, Beijing will host the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a key meeting held every five years. Salmon Lee, an analyst at the petrochemical consulting firm PCI Wood Mackenzie, says the order is already being felt. “This has led to confusion among chemical and logistics companies,” as well as a sharp
increase in market prices for some the Communist Party of China. products, he wrote in a note to clients. complies with newly tightened safety rules. The disruption is only the latest to be Still, the Congress-related restrictions experienced by China’s chemical industry on shipping could end up being only a miso far in 2017. Authorities have ordered nor challenge. A spokesperson for Wacker hundreds of chemical plants either to Chemie, which operates a silicones plant cease operations because of their high in Zhangjiagang in Jiangsu, says the comlevels of emissions or to relocate because pany considers stricter controls on danthey are too close to residential areas. The gerous-goods shipments on the Yangtze result has been shortages and higher costs River “a temporary measure.” Business for drug manufacturers that use chemical isn’t impacted so far, he adds. raw materials. In Hangzhou, in the nearby province of Even before the new restrictions on Zhejiang, Jack Ye, managing director of the shipping, foreign chemical producers had active pharmaceutical ingredients trading been wondering how to handle and store firm Viwa Group, says many companies chemicals legally. The European Union have become familiar with the promulgaChamber of Commerce in China noted tion of restrictions ahead of major meetrecently that China doesn’t have enough warehouse and shipping infrastructure that ings.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY
CRISPR’s next target: The bad bugs in your gut The French biotech start-up Eligo Bioscience lands $20 million in series A funding to advance its CRISPR-packed phage platform Doctors may one day prescribe pills filled with the CRISPR gene-editing system to seek and destroy the DNA of bad bugs that create disarray in the microbiome or are resistant to antibiotics. That’s the goal of Eligo Bioscience, a French biotech start-up that received its first $20 million series A funding round from Khosla Ventures and Seventure Partners last week. CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing is wellknown for its pervasive use in research and its ongoing development by multiple companies as a therapy to treat genetic diseases. But Eligo has a different application in mind. The firm is designing virus-derived “nanobots”
Duportet (left) and Eligo cofounder David Bikard.
to unleash CRISPR’s molecular scissors on disease-causing bacteria while leaving other gut microbes unscathed, Eligo CEO Xavier Duportet says. CRISPR contains two components: a Cas enzyme that cuts DNA and an RNA strand that directs the enzyme to a specific and complementary strand of DNA for cutting. To deliver this complex, Eligo scientists are stripping down bacteria-infecting viruses, called bacteriophages, to their hollow shells. These modified bacteriophages are then stuffed with CRISPR and shuttled into bacteria. There, CRISPR chops carefully selected DNA strands essential for cell survival, causing the bugs to die. “CRISPR is hot, and it works great. But what’s hard is delivery,” Duportet says. He thinks Eligo has an advantage over other delivery platforms (such as adeno-associated viruses and lipid nanoparticles) since its therapy has to be delivered only to the gut, meaning it could be ingested as a pill.
Eligo’s first therapy in development is for an unspecified “rare disease caused by a gut bacteria for which there are not current treatments available,” Duportet says. The new funding is expected to get the therapy through development, Phase I clinical studies, and possibly Phase II clinical studies. He plans to start trials by 2020. This is the first significant funding for using CRISPR as an antibiotic or microbiome modulator, although another start-up, Locus Biosciences, is similarly using CRISPR-filled bacteriophages to selectively kill bacteria. Duportet says Eligo’s technology can be more than just a bacteria killer, though. Eligo is exploring other ways to use the CRISPR-filled viral shells for treating microbiome diseases. Duportet acknowledges the new technology may seem financially risky. “But if it works, it could become a cornerstone of personalized medicine,” he says.—RYAN CROSS OCTOBER 2, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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