Rachel Haurwitz, Caribou Biosciences. “Transformative genome-edited cell therapies for patients: a journey from the academic lab to the clinic”

Rachel Haurwitz is a leading scientist and entrepreneur in the field of gene editing and biotechnology. In 2011, she helped establish Caribou Biosciences, a business devoted to advancing and promoting CRISPR-Cas gene editing technology.

At Harvard University, where Haurwitz finished her undergraduate studies in biological sciences, she won the Thomas T. Hoopes Award for her thesis on the development of CRISPR-Cas systems. She then continued on to the University of California, Berkeley, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology. There, she worked in the lab of Jennifer Doudna.

Under Haurwitz’s leadership, Caribou has secured partnerships with several major pharmaceutical and biotech companies and raised millions of dollars in funding. She has also been recognized for her contributions to science and entrepreneurship, including being named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in Science in 2015 and the MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 list in 2016. Overall, Rachel Haurwitz’s work at Caribou Biosciences has helped to advance the field of gene editing and has the potential to revolutionize a wide range of industries in the years to come.