On January 21, the Center for Law & the Biosciences sponsored a lunch talk on “Addgene: A Unique Nonprofit Accelerating Science.” Since its founding by MIT students in 2004, the nonprofit Addgene (www.addgene.org), has been helping to accelerate scientific research by facilitating labs’ access to useful materials and information. As of today, Addgene distributes over 97,000 reagents from more than 4,500 labs to over 100 countries. Our special guest, Dr. Joanne Kamens, Ph.D., Executive Director of Addgene, joined us to discuss Addgene’s history, the contractual structure it has negotiated in order to transfer biological materials around the world, and the role this important organization is playing in the development of key areas like CRISPR and COVID-19.  A link to the recording of the presentation can be found here.