Vertex Pharmaceuticals expanded the company’s collaborative partnership with CRISPR Therapeutics to develop and commercialize a possible cure for sickle cell disease (SCD) and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia (TDT). The focus is on the development of CTX001, an autologous, ex vivo CRISPR-CAS9 gene-edited therapy.
Caribou Biosciences secured $115 million in an oversubscribed Series C financing round that will be used to advance the company’s pipeline of wholly owned allogeneic immune cell therapies for oncology and its next-generation CRISPR technology platform.
AbbVie announced the company’s latest chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell investment, a collaboration with Caribou Biosciences worth $40 million up front in cash and equity to develop two CRISPR-edited cell therapies against AbbVie-specified targets.
At the 2021 virtual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ chief executive officer Reshma Kewalramani said the company is looking to buy “mid- and late-stage assets.”
BioSpace presented the NextGen Bio “Class of 2021,” a list of up-and-coming life sciences companies in North America that recently launched.
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition began December 5 with numerous presentations, abstracts and posters.
Clarivate Plc released the company’s list of Highly Cited Researchers 2020 that identifies researchers who “demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade.”
Intent on growing PerkinElmer’s life sciences portfolio, the company agreed to acquire cell engineering specialist Horizon Discovery Group for $383 million.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their discovery and development of CRISPR gene editing.
Light-activated CRISPR technology edits genes more precisely and faster than the more standard chemical methods, and enables “super-fast” DNA repair, according to research from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
