Tessa M. Bertozzi

Key facts

• Equal-contribution co-first author of Neumann, Bertozzi et al., Science, 28 June 2024 (DOI 10.1126/science.ado7082), listed at the Whitehead Institute and HHMI at MIT.
• The paper credits her with leading development of the self-silencing strategies and characterizing the animal studies.
• Whitehead described her as a Weissman lab postdoc who co-led engineering of the editor; the work cut brain PrP by more than 80 percent in mice.
• Her postdoctoral work was supported by the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, per the paper's funding section.
• Co-inventor with Neumann and Weissman on US12252715B2 (filed 16 February 2024, granted 18 March 2025, assignee Whitehead), with continuations filed 24 September 2024.
• Also co-inventor with Neumann, Weissman, Minikel and Vallabh on a provisional application filed jointly by Whitehead and Broad covering zinc finger CHARMs for prion disease.
• Chroma Medicine took an exclusive license to CHARM from Whitehead on 27 June 2024; Weissman is a Chroma co-founder.
• In February 2025 Apertura agreed to support the Broad and Whitehead team developing a CHARM plus TfR1 capsid prion gene therapy, aiming for the clinic; she is not named in that release.
• In September 2024 she gave a lecture on DNA methylation in the brain to the Vallabh and Minikel lab, feeding into their analysis of CHARM durability.
• Current role: the Weissman lab alumni list gives Senior Scientist at Conception Biosciences, and Conception's team page lists her as Principal Scientist.
• Conception works on making human eggs from stem cells in Berkeley, so her current work is outside prion disease.
• Her most recent indexed output is a January 2026 bioRxiv preprint on IAP retrotransposons in mouse placenta, from her Cambridge line of work; no newer CHARM paper with her as author was found.
• One-line bio: PhD in Genetics, University of Cambridge, 2019, supervised by Anne Ferguson-Smith, on variable methylation of endogenous retroviruses.

Timeline

1. 2019Cambridge PhD thesis dated (Department of Genetics).
2. 2020First author, PNAS paper on KRAB zinc finger proteins and methylation variability.
3. 2021First author, Nature Genetics paper on variably methylated retrotransposons.
4. 2024CHARM patent application 18/444,590 filed by Whitehead.
5. 2024Whitehead news release on CHARM; Chroma Medicine announces exclusive CHARM license.
6. 2024Science CHARM paper published, co-first author.
7. 2024Minikel post records her DNA methylation lecture to the Vallabh and Minikel lab.
8. 2025Apertura announces support for the Broad and Whitehead CHARM prion gene therapy program.
9. 2025US12252715B2 granted.
10. 2026Co-author of bioRxiv preprint on IAP retrotransposons in mouse placenta.
11. 2026Listed as Principal Scientist on the Conception team page; Weissman lab lists her as alumna.