The MIT team Kano Therapeutics won the 2021 Sloan Healthcare Innovations Prize Thursday with its novel approach for producing single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). The technology could make gene therapies safer, more personalized, and cheaper. Most gene therapies utilize double-stranded DNA, which can miss its target in the body and produce unwanted side effects. Single-stranded DNA has the potential to more precisely deliver genetic material to cells, but manufacturing ssDNA is currently expensive and inflexible. Kano uses a novel approach to make ssDNA production more practical for applications like engineering immune cells…
