US EditionSan Francisco Startup Raises $30M for Embryo Gene Editing Research
- Earlier this year, gene-editing scientist Lucas Harrington founded Preventive Medicine PBC in San Francisco and incorporated it in Delaware in May 2025, raising $30 million from private funders.
- To test safety, the company plans staged laboratory experiments starting with mice, then primates, human cells, and embryos, aiming to prevent genetic diseases using base editing.
- The Wall Street Journal reported Sam Altman and Brian Armstrong are among the firm's early investors, but Harrington declined to identify backers beyond SciFounders, leaving funding sources unclear.
- U.S. law currently bars experiments that could produce gene-edited babies, and bioethicists warned, with Hank Greely saying `Move fast and break things has not worked very well for Silicon Valley in health care` and Ben Hurlbut calling it `a dangerous moment`.
- Some backers are eyeing jurisdictions with looser rules like Prospera, island city off Honduras, while advocates argue gene editing could spare future generations and critics warn it risks reviving eugenics-era impulses.
33 Articles
33 Articles
Startup Secretly Working to Gene-Hack Human Baby
In today’s installment of “hey please don’t do that,” the Wall Street Journal reports that a clandestine startup named Preventive is trying to usher in the first known birth of a genetically-modified baby outside China. First, a little background on human gene-hacking, also known as germline gene editing. On top of being wildly unethical — and we’re talking Frankenstein levels here — human gene-editing has also been strictly prohibited in the US…
Are we close to cloning genetically modified children? A new startup of Silicon Valley, Preventive, is attracting the attention of the scientific world for its research on genetic editing of human embryos. The company, founded by scientist Lucas Harrington, has received funding from some billionaires of big tech like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Brian Armstrong of Coinbase. According to the Wall Street Journal, the stated goal is to put an end to he…
Every Baby is Already Perfect – Stop Trying to Genetically Engineer Them
It might be illegal in the United States to genetically edit embryos, but that hasn’t stopped some well-funded entities from working towards that goal – as well as looking elsewhere to do it. He Jiankui is a Chinese biophysicist who spent three years in jail for engineering embryos that he claims were immune to HIV. The embryos were implanted and eventually delivered. Jiankui claims they are all healthy. Two of them are twin girls named Lulu and…
An article in the Wall Street Journal tells of Preventive: supported by prominent names of tech giants, including Sam Altman of OpenAI and Brian Arms...
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