Dive Brief:
- Editas Medicine will lay off 180 employees, or about two-thirds of its workforce, over the next six months as part of a broader pivot to focus its drug research on “in vivo” gene editing, the biotechnology company said Thursday.
- In October, Editas revealed plans to change course, announcing that it would seek to license out its lead CRISPR medicine for sickle cell disease. That search did not identify a commercial partner, Editas said, leading to the company’s decision to end development of the therapy.
- Among those departing the company is Baisong Mei, the company’s chief medical officer. Two members of the board of directors will also resign at the end of the year.
Dive Insight:
Thursday’s pivot, which Editas telegraphed in its October announcement, is the biotech’s second major research reset in its 11-year history.
One of the first few companies founded to translate CRISPR science into medicines, Editas prioritized developing treatments for inherited eye disorders. In 2019, it achieved the notable milestone of becoming the first drugmaker to test in humans an “in vivo” CRISPR therapy, where gene editing takes place directly in the body. (By comparison, reni-cel is made by using CRISPR on a patient’s cells in a laboratory.)
But development hit repeated delays and study results, when Editas finally obtained them, weren’t sufficiently strong to merit further advancement. The company instead chose to focus resources on testing the therapy that would become reni-cel in sickle cell and beta thalassemia, two blood disorders that were already the target of rivals CRISPR Therapeutics and Bluebird bio. Both of those companies have since won U.S. approval of their therapies, now called Casgevy and Lyfgenia.
While data has suggested reni-cel could be comparably powerful in treating sickle cell, Editas is leaving it behind after failing to secure a partner.
“Recent scientific breakthroughs by the Editas team have convinced us that the timelines around the near-term viability of in vivo CRISPR-edited medicines have accelerated meaningfully,” Editas CEO Gilmore O’Neill said in a statement. “Based on these advances, we are transitioning to a fully in vivo company.”
Editas noted recent data from mice experiments that showed it could efficiently deliver its CRISPR editing machinery directly into stem cells, rather than extracting those cells first for modification outside the body.
The company said it would share more preclinical data and development timelines in the first quarter of 2025.
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- Source: https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/editas-layoffs-reni-cel-discontinue-pivot-in-vio/735465/