Startup Legal Garage Celebrates Nobel for Jennifer A. Doudna
The year was2012.Few if any specialists outside of scientific labsknew what CRISPRstood for, let alone what the technology could do.
But asmall,select group of UC Law SF students, working withUC Law SF’under the tutelage of famed Wilson Sonsini patent lawyer, wascombing the patent landscapeto determinewhethera nascent startupcould becomecommercially competitiveas it madeCRISPRavailable to others.
That startup,, led byDr.JenniferA.Doudna, was in a cohort of bioscience companies thatcameto the Startup Legal Garage through,UC’s hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in the life sciencesand the chief pipeline for the Startup Legal Garage’s patent module.
Dr. Jennifer Doudna
This week, Doudna, a professor of chemistryat UC Berkeley and already highly renowned in her field,receivedthe Nobel Prize for chemistry, along with Dr.EmmanuelleCharpentierof the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin.The pairdevelopedCrispr-Cas9, a method to editthe DNA of animals, plants,and microorganisms with high precision.
Charpentier and Doudna pioneered the work in 2012,atthe same time Doudna and her,Caribou,were looking for ways to make it commercially available to other scientists and companies,allwith the help of the Startup Legal Garage.
The pair is the firstall-woman team to win a Nobel prize.
“When Caribou applied to Startup Legal Garage, there was a tremor of excitement,” said Prof.Robin Feldman, who founded the Startup Legal Garagea decade ago.“I remember saying to people that not since Genentech launched the entire biotech industry has a technology offered so much promise. Now, it appears to be one of the greatest life science inventions of our time.”
One mission of theStartup Legal Garageisto increase equity in the tech world by providing services to women and entrepreneurs of color.“We have been celebratingJennifer’s monumental accomplishment,” said ProfessorPaul Belonick, director of the Startup Legal Garage. “We’re gladourUC Law SFLawstudents played a role in getting hercompanyoff the ground.”
Founded in2010, the Startup Legal Garage provides patent and corporate legal resources, free of charge, as part of UC Law SF’Center for Innovation(C4i), led by Feldman. Each participating startup is assigned a legal team comprised of a supervising attorney from a leading intellectual property or corporate law firm and two UC Law SF students.
“Hastings andthe Startup Legal Garage has become an essential element of the Bay Area life science entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said Wilson Sonsini’s Norviel. “Their essential role in the ecosystem is dramatically illustrated by the fact that the science behindone ofthe first Startup Legal Garage projectsis now thesubjectof the Nobel Prize. This also demonstratesthecompletely unique educational experience offered to law students via the program.”
In the patent module, students perform a patent landscape analysis, whichispart of early-stage due diligence required for young life science companies looking for investors.In the corporate module,law students help young companies set up their business and prepare to grow.
Wilson Sonsini attorneys continue to work with students and clients from Startup Legal Garagethrough both modules.“Iam proud to have been a small part,” Norviel said.
Read more about Crispr.
The featured image that appears on the home page is used with permission from the Nobel Foundation.