In late 2021, Amber Salzman interviewed for a job that she had no intention of taking. A relatively new start-up company, called Epicrispr Biotechnologies, was looking for a chief executive, and it was keen on vetting Salzman ' who had decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry ' for the role. She had said yes to the meeting only as a favour to a recruiter, who had helped her to fill a key position at another company she had worked with. Joining the start-up wasn't something she was enthusiastic about. Halfway through the meeting, she changed her mind. Salzman had watched as Stanley Qi, the founder of Epicrispr, drew diagrams on a whiteboard explaining that the company wanted to make a genetic therapy ' not by editing the code itself, but by changing the chemical markers attached to DNA, which can switch genes on or off. Then Salzman asked another team member: ''What disease are we going after'' And she said, 'FSHD'.' Salzman knew the condition all too well. FSHD, short...
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