Cytosurge’s CellEDIT Conquers "Impossible" Genome Engineering Challenges
A new peer-reviewed study validates CellEDIT’s ability to overcome cell-editing barriers, uncovering dermokine’s pivotal role in wound healing and skin cancer biology.
Zurich, Switzerland – July 9, 2026 – Cytosurge AG, the pioneer of same-cell biology, announced today the open-access publication of a collaborative study with the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in the peer-reviewed journal JCI Insight. By uncovering the mechanisms behind skin cell adhesion, this research opens the door to new therapeutic targets for patients suffering from debilitating chronic ulcers, as well as epithelial skin cancers where a loss of cellular adhesion drives tumor growth.
To make these discoveries, the researchers needed to edit human keratinocytes, skin cells that are notoriously fragile and difficult to engineer. The study, entitled “Multi-omics analysis reveals dermokine as a regulator of keratinocyte differentiation and adhesion”, highlights how the CellEDIT service overcame this barrier. Using the CellEDIT workflow, the DTU team and Cytosurge created dermokine isoform-specific knockouts in human keratinocytes to unravel the protein's role in skin biology.
“CellEDIT has increased the impact of our research, enabling us to generate multiple independent clones, which helped us cross-validate the biology and deepen our data,” emphasized Vahap Canbay, PhD, Postdoctoral Scientist at DTU and first author of the publication. “This allowed us to decode previously inaccessible cellular processes and pinpoint key mechanisms behind dermokine’s role in cell-cell adhesion, with implications for skin health and disease.”
While traditional bulk delivery can severely stress sensitive cells and skews results toward “stress survivors,” CellEDIT enabled straightforward multi-guide CRISPR editing with controlled dosing and minimal stress, preserving true biological replicates and the cells’ natural phenotype. The team further validated these findings in tissue from patients with chronic, non-healing wounds, confirming that the lab-observed mechanisms directly mirror real-world tissue repair challenges.
“Keratinocytes are particularly difficult to edit using traditional CRISPR methods due to their sensitivity and low transfection efficiency. Our workflow provided the deterministic precision and control needed to overcome this,” remarked Tobias Beyer, PhD, CSO at Cytosurge and co-author of the publication. “This is a further validation of CellEDIT as a tool for studying cellular mechanisms in difficult-to-edit models, including 3D organotypic skin cultures.”
“By shifting from probabilistic trial-and-error to deterministic control, we help researchers tackle supposedly 'impossible' edits,” added Adèle Kerjouan, PhD, CellEDIT Product Manager at Cytosurge. “This approach allows scientists to address critical biological questions with high biological integrity.”
About The Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Founded in 1829 with the mission of creating value for the benefit of society, DTU is an international elite technical university where education, scientific advice, and innovation rest on a solid foundation of world-class research. The University is at the academic and multidisciplinary forefront of the technical and the natural sciences with new initiatives in a number of demanding engineering disciplines, including sustainable energy technology and life science.
About Cytosurge
Cytosurge is pioneering same-cell biology. Through its patented FluidFM® technology, Cytosurge enables scientists to read, write, and analyze the same living cell over time, turning destructive snapshots into causal trajectories. Powered by Cytosurge's proprietary FluidFM OMNIUM platform, CellEDIT delivers deterministic, vector-free CRISPR engineering. By eliminating the toxicity of bulk editing, CellEDIT empowers researchers to engineer "impossible" cell lines while preserving true biological phenotypes for causal analysis.
Please visit www.cytosurge.com and follow us on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn, and visit our YouTube channel for insightful videos on our technology and its applications.
Contact:
Erica Fiorini, PhD, Media Relations & Scientific Community Manager
+41 43 544 87 08
media@cytosurge.com
Mette Haagen Marcussen, Senior Communications and Strategy Advisor
+45 23 71 23 10
mehma@dtu.dk
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