Establishment of an industrial base- and prime-editing platform for the identification of cancer drug resistance mechanisms and targets.

Cancer drug resistance causes 80 to 90 percent of cancer-related deaths, yet current methods only detect it after it has already spread through patient populations. BaseRx, the company behind this project, is building a platform that uses advanced genome editing tools—specifically base editing and prime editing—to find the single-letter DNA changes that make tumours stop responding to drugs. Existing CRISPR screens can knock out genes, but they cannot mimic the precise point mutations that drive resistance in real patients. This platform aims to recreate that genetic diversity in the lab, letting researchers see which variants matter before they become a clinical problem. If the platform works, it could shift how drug resistance is studied: from reactive observation to proactive identification. Pharmaceutical companies might use it to test new drugs against a library of resistance mutations early in development, potentially flagging weak points before a drug reaches clinical trials. The impact would be felt in the drug development pipeline and in clinical decision-making, not in a patient’s daily life directly. This is applied biotechnology—it aims to make a specific industrial process faster and more predictive, not to produce an immediate consumer product.