Daniel Anderson is a world leader and pioneer in the field of non-viral gene therapy, biomaterials and cell delivery. His work has resulted in fundamental advances in science and technology, over 400 publications, patents and patent applications, and the formation of companies, clinical products and technologies in clinical translation. He has made seminal contributions to the development of non-viral RNA therapy (e.g., Akinc et al., Nature Biotechnology 2008, Love et al., PNAS 2010, Dong et al., PNAS 2014), including mRNA vaccines (e.g., Chahal et al., PNAS 2016, Miao et al., Nature Biotechnology 2019), where his technology is in clinical development for multiple therapies. He was the first to develop CRISPR to treat a disease model in an adult animal in vivo (Yin et al., Nature Biotechnology 2014) and to develop non-viral delivery systems that enable in vivo CRISPR editing (Yin et al., Nature Biotechnology 2016, 2017).
He is a co-founder of CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP), which licensed his technology and initiated the first company-sponsored trials of CRISPR. He has also made major advances in the delivery of therapeutic cells by developing the first super-biocompatible materials (e.g. Vegas et al., Nature Biotechnology 2016, Vegas et al., Nature Medicine 2016). This has enabled the long-term survival of transplanted islets without immune suppression in non-human primates (e.g. Boechnek et al., Nature Biomedical Engineering 2018) and was the foundational technology behind Sigilon Inc (SGTX), which has entered clinical trials and is collaborating with Eli Lilly and others on living therapeutics for multiple diseases, including hemophilia, diabetes, and lysosomal storage disorders.