‘Designer baby’ start-ups test limits of biotech taboo

The attempt to commercialise gene editing of human embryos has survived the shutdown of two early ventures, with so-called “designer baby” companies and wealthy investors continuing to pursue one of biotechnology’s most controversial ambitions.

US-based Bootstrap Bio and Manhattan Genomics both ceased operating within the past year, the former after failing to raise further funding and the latter following a dispute between its founders. Neither published a scientific breakthrough.

Yet money continues to move into the field. Preventive, a San Francisco-based embryo-editing start-up, raised nearly $30mn last year from investors, including OpenAI chief Sam Altman and his husband as well as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

Nucleus Genomics, backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, is funding further academic research into germline gene editing — where the DNA in egg cells, sperm cells or embryos is edited — with the goal of eventually offering the technology commercially.

In March, Cathy Tie, the serial biotech entrepreneur who co-founded Manhattan Genomics, launched another embryo-editing company Origin Genomics, just months after Manhattan ceased operating.

The companies are pursuing ways to alter DNA in human embryos, initially with the stated aim of preventing genetic disease. Some proponents also envisage using the technology to influence traits such as intelligence.

That prospect has made germline gene editing scientifically and ethically contentious. Critics fear commercialisation could create a path from treating disease to engineering desirable traits.

Bootstrap Bio’s founder Chase Denecke said the company shut down due to a lack of funding: “We raised some money . . . we just were not able to raise more.”

The company’s chief science officer Qichen Yuan was arrested and charged with attempted sex trafficking of a child in August 2025 and indicted the following month. Yuan has pleaded not guilty.

Denecke said that at the time of the arrest and indictment Yuan was no longer serving as the company’s chief science officer and had moved to a part-time advisory role.

He said that he was unaware of the charge until after the company shut down in late 2025. “Obviously, if I had known he would not have been employed with us.” Bootstrap Bio’s closure had nothing to do with the arrest, he added.

Manhattan Genomics folded after a dispute between Tie and Eriona Hysolli, the start-up’s other co-founder and chief science officer, over the company’s location for business operations. All capital was returned to investors after Manhattan folded, said Tie.

The field has been under intense scrutiny since Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced in 2018 that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies, an experiment that led to his imprisonment for three years and cast a shadow over subsequent research.

Last year, three gene and cell therapy groups proposed a 10-year moratorium on heritable human genome editing. It is “a real slippery slope towards . . . eugenic or quasi-eugenic applications”, said Tim Hunt, chief executive of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, which supported the moratorium.

Some scientists are sceptical of certain stated missions to cure genetic disease. Often the real goal “is they just want to make improved babies”, said Fyodor Urnov, professor of genetics at the University of California Berkeley.

Proponents argue that germline gene editing could ultimately be cheaper and more effective than existing gene therapies. Somatic gene therapies, which target non-reproductive cells and affect only the patient receiving them, can cost $2mn or more, while designer baby start-ups have suggested embryo editing could eventually cost about $5,000 per embryo.

Robin Lovell-Badge, a developmental biologist at the Francis Crick Institute, said somatic gene therapies are valuable but carry risks and are difficult to deliver to the relevant parts of the body. “It’s not surprising that you might want to try and find alternative ways of dealing with a genetic problem,” he said.

Embryo gene editing could be promising if shown to be safe and effective, he added, noting that serious academic research was under way. But most start-ups in the sector lacked scientific credibility, he said, and efforts to enhance traits such as intelligence were “very dodgy”.

For companies trying to turn the research into a business, the more immediate obstacle is that many jurisdictions around the world prohibit the use of germline gene editing for reproductive purposes.

Denecke said early customers could be prospective parents travelling to countries with lax IVF regulation. But fundraising was difficult because few venture capitalists understood the technology or its path to market. Advancing it required a “critical mass of people with enough money”, he said. “In this field, that’s more difficult than most.”

Recommended

Other investors remain wary. Hysolli said regulatory uncertainty could be holding back investment, while Will Harborne, general partner of LongGame Ventures, said ethical questions had put his firm off investing in embryo gene editing in the near term.

Despite those obstacles, companies continue to attract backing in the broader market for selecting — and potentially one day editing — embryos.

Preventive, the start-up backed by Altman among others, said it would first establish whether using embryo editing to treat disease can be done safely before commercialising the technology. “We will not compromise safety standards to accelerate timelines,” the company said in a statement.

Embryo-screening companies are also expanding the commercial market around reproductive genetics. Another start-up, Nucleus Genomics, promises to help prospective parents “have their best baby” by analysing embryos for more than 30 diseases and traits, including eye colour, IQ and baldness. It also offers a service to test prospective parents for over 2,000 inherited conditions.

The company is funding further human germline gene-editing research at Columbia University and wants eventually to offer a gene-editing service to customers. Its existing screening business could therefore give it a route into a market that embryo-editing companies do not yet have.

Nucleus charges $9,999 for its screening service, which is available in more than 165 clinics worldwide.

Even sceptics think designer baby start-ups are here to stay.

“It pains me to say that . . . they cannot be stopped,” Urnov said. “What will be the size and impact on . . . genetic medicine therapies? I am hopeful [it is] negligible.”