February 9, 2025
A team of maverick scientists is trying to build a bootleg version of a million-dollar drug
Slybera is an early stage bootleg version of the gene therapy Glybera, a made-in-Canada medical breakthrough that became the world's first approved gene therapy and the world's most expensive drug.
Slybera is an early stage bootleg version of the gene therapy Glybera, a made-in-Canada medical breakthrough that became the world’s first approved gene therapy and the world’s most expensive drug.

Last weekend in Las Vegas, Gabriel Licina sat on the edge of a stage at the Biohack the Planet 2019 conference and held up a small package filled with vials of bacteria containing a pirated copy of a human gene.

He offered to give a free sample to anyone with access to a biology lab who was prepared to take his nascent gene therapy and run with it.

“This was developed in a shed in Mississippi, a warehouse in Florida, a bedroom in Indiana and a computer in Austria,” he told the audience of self-described biohackers. They’re science enthusiasts who experiment with biology outside the scientific mainstream, often working in home laboratories and sometimes testing their inventions on themselves.

“Step zero is to not inject yourself with this thing,” Licina told the audience.”Please, for the love of god, stop stabbing yourself.”

Licina doesn’t like the term “biohacker.” He has a degree in molecular biology and considers himself an independent biologist. “We’re not just random chumps here,” he said.

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