Funding CRISPR: Understanding the role of government and philanthropic institutions in supporting academic research within the CRISPR innovation system

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how government and philanthropic funding shape CRISPR research, revealing distinct funding focuses and co-funding networks that influence the development of this transformative technology.

Contribution

It provides a detailed mapping of funding sources and networks supporting CRISPR research, highlighting the roles of government and philanthropy in its development.

Findings

US government funds focus on biological and technological research

Philanthropic organizations mainly fund genome editing applications

Co-funding networks connect major research institutions and funders

Abstract

CRISPR/Cas has the potential to revolutionize medicine, agriculture, and biology. Understanding the trajectory of CRISPR research, how it is influenced and who pays for it, is an essential research policy question. We use a combination of methods to map, via quantitative content analysis of CRISPR papers, the research funding profile of major government agencies and organizations philanthropic, and the networks involved in supporting key stages of high-influence research, namely basic biological research and technological development. The results of the content analysis show how the research supported by the main US government agencies focus both on the study of CRISPR as a biological phenomenon and on its technological development and use as a biomedical research tool. US philanthropic organizations with the exception of HHMI, tend, by contrast, to specialize in funding CRISPR as a genome editing technology. We present a model of co-funding networks at the two most prominent institutions for CRISPR/Cas research, the University of California and the Harvard/MIT/Broad Institute, to illuminate how philanthropic organizations have articulated with government agencies to co-finance the discovery and development of CRISPR/Cas. Our results raise fundamental questions about the role of the state and the influence of philanthropy over the trajectory of transformative technologies.