In 2025, gene therapy is no longer science fiction.

More than 40 therapies are now approved globally. Sickle cell disease, SMA, inherited blindness, and hemophilia — once life-limiting conditions — can now be treated with a single infusion.

Yet only sixty years ago, humanity did not even know what DNA looked like. So how did we get from “unknown molecule” to “routine gene correction”?

The answer lies in a relay race of Nobel Prizes — each discovery passing the baton to the next.

Today, we revisit the first 30 years: the era when humanity learned to read the code of life, laying the foundation for companies like EDITGENE to eventually rewrite it.

Three Nobel Prizes established the ability to identify and read any gene — the fundamental prerequisite for gene editing.

1962 Medicine Prize — The Double Helix (Watson, Crick, Wilkins)

The structure of DNA revealed the physical target of all future editing.

Before this discovery, altering genes was unimaginable because we didn’t even know what the substrate looked like.

1968 Medicine Prize — Cracking the Genetic Code (Holley, Khorana, Nirenberg)

Once we knew the structure, we learned the language.

Decoding the 64 codons taught us how DNA becomes protein — knowledge essential for designing today’s knockout, knock-in, and prime-editing strategies.

1980 Chemistry Prize — Sanger Sequencing (Frederick Sanger)

For the first time, we could read a gene letter-by-letter.

This ability is still the foundation of modern QC standards used by EDITGENE today — from confirming point mutations to validating full-allele knockouts.

Three more discoveries provided the molecular toolkit that every gene therapy workflow — and every CRISPR edit — still depends on.

1978 Medicine Prize & 1980 Chemistry Prize — Restriction Enzymes & Recombinant DNA

These breakthroughs gave scientists molecular scissors and glue, enabling the first forms of genetic engineering. This era paved the way for today’s CRISPR-Cas9, prime editing, and programmable knock-in technologies.

1993 Chemistry Prize — PCR (Kary Mullis)

PCR made it possible to amplify any DNA sequence in hours — powering diagnostics, sequencing, vector construction, and nearly every experiment in modern genomics.

From Reading to Editing — And Now Engineering

By 1993, the world had the blueprint, the dictionary, and the basic tools. But three critical questions remained:

1. How do we target one precise gene among billions?

2. How will a cell repair itself after we edit it?

3. How does the immune system respond to engineered cells or delivery vectors?

The next 30 years — CRISPR, prime editing, immunology, and delivery systems — would transform these unanswered questions into clinically approved solutions.

This is the landscape where EDITGENE now operates: turning decades of Nobel-driven discovery into practical engineered cell lines, therapeutic models, and scalable gene-editing platforms used by scientists worldwide.

Stay tuned — the most exciting part of the story is coming next.

(Or, if you can’t wait for Part 2, explore how EDITGENE translates these discoveries into CRISPR knockout, knock-in, prime-editing, and disease-model solutions for modern research. Spoiler alert!)

The relay for gene therapy race has reached its final sprint.

In the previous part of this journey, we traveled from 1953 to 1993 – the era when we learned to read and rewrite DNA.

Now, this trip enters its next decisive stage: the breakthroughs that made actual editing safe, predictable, and immunologically silent.

Two prizes (2015 and 2020) together forged modern gene-editing technology.

2015 Chemistry Prize – DNA Repair Mechanisms (Lindahl, Modrich, Sancar)

The mechanisms for DNA repair enabled a leap from random disruption to controlled genome writing.

Homology-Directed Repair (HDR) can now be harnessed alongside a donor template to achieve precise genomic corrections, such as gene knock-in.

EDITGENE’s FLASH-KI technology directly harnesses this natural pathway, transforming error-prone repair events into stable, safe, and fully predictable precision edits.

2020 Chemistry Prize – CRISPR-Cas9 (Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier)

Our superstar finally stepped into the spotlight.

This award recognized the breakthrough that turned a bacterial immune system into a programmable gene-editing tool for rewriting life's code.

CRISPR-Cas9 finally gave scientists and biotechlogy company like EDITGENE the ability to target and cut virtually any gene with unparalleled ease and precision.

Three Nobel breakthroughs (2007, 2024, 2025) removed the final barriers to clinical translation.

2007 Medicine Prize – Gene Targeting Mice (Capecchi, Evans, Smithies)

Humanized mouse models generated through this approach faithfully recapitulate human disease-causing mutations and phenotypes.

They provide the lifetime-tested system capable of demonstrating that a gene-editing therapy restores endogenous gene function without introducing oncogenic risk.

As such, these models stand as the indispensable bridge from petri dish to patient.

2024 Chemistry Prize – Computational Protein Design & Structure Prediction (Baker, Hassabis, Jumper)

Modern gene therapy needs smaller, smarter, and safer delivery tools.

AlphaFold and other protein design AI have produced miniature Cas proteins, high-fidelity variants with near-zero off-target effects, and entirely new enzymes that work better in human cells.

The leap from bench to bedside accelerated dramatically.

2025 Medicine Prize – Regulatory T Cells and Peripheral Tolerance (Shimon Sakaguchi, Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell)

For decades, immune rejection stood as the chief barrier to durable gene therapy, whether delivered by viral vectors or ex vivo – edited cells.

The 2025 Prize reshaped that paradigm by revealing how regulatory T cells regulate immune tolerance.

By making use of this built-in defense system, researchers transformed a once tough problem into a manageable challenge – unlocking safe, long – term therapies and making 2025 as the year gene therapy truly came of age.