CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — The National Institutes of Health, through the Office of the Director and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, has awarded Factor Bioscience two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants to accelerate the development of new treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease.

The first project will use Factor’s patent-pending RiboSlice gene-editing technology to generate rodent models of Alzheimer’s. “The unprecedented efficiency of RiboSlice enables the rapid generation of complex, defined mutations in rodent cells. With this technology, we can create models that exhibit exceptional similarity to human disease,” commented project leader Mark Scott, Chief Science Officer and Director of New Model Development.

The second project will combine RiboSlice technology with Factor’s patent-pending integration-free reprogramming and directed-differentiation technologies to generate a library of human neural cells containing defined mutations in Alzheimer’s-associated genes. “This library will enable the first well-controlled high-throughput screens using human neural cells with an Alzheimer’s phenotype. We believe that this library has the potential to dramatically accelerate the identification of new Alzheimer’s drug candidates by shifting high-content efficacy testing to an earlier stage of the drug-development process,” explains project leader Dr. Christopher Rohde, Chief Operating Officer and Director of High-Throughput Technologies.