STAT+: Trailing other sickle cell drug makers, Editas still sees opportunity for its CRISPR therapy
"The patient community, all payers, all regulatory agencies, they all welcome multiple drugs," said Baisong Mei, Editas’s chief medical officer.
FRANKFURT, Germany — Even as other cutting-edge genetic therapies for sickle cell disease move closer to approval, the CRISPR company Editas Medicine believes there is still a need and a commercial opportunity for its treatment, which remains further behind in development.
On Friday, Editas offered a preliminary update on the handful of patients who’ve received its gene-editing-based therapy for sickle cell, which is also being tested for another blood disorder, beta thalassemia. The company reported that the first four patients to get the one-time CRISPR therapy saw promising improvements in their levels of a particular blood protein, and had been living free of the dire pain crises their condition causes.
The results, which also showed no serious adverse events tied to the therapy, Edit-301, were announced coinciding with the European Hematology Association’s annual meeting in Frankfurt.
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