![]() As deals go, this was a good deal for an almost preclinical company. After this data, Beam got into a major deal with Pfizer with an upfront payment of $300M and potential milestone payments of up to $1.35B, plus royalties. The BEAM-102 program's IND was postponed last year in favour of pushing BEAM-101 forward. …Editas Medicine's ( EDIT) EDIT-301 demonstrated proof-of-concept for editing the promoter region of HGB 1/2 leading to 45.4% fetal hemoglobin (HbF) induction, while preclinical data for BEAM-101 was ~65% HbF induction. The other one showed that BEAM-101 and 102 were both able to achieve very high levels of allelic editing.Īn analyst noted the following competitive data for BEAM-101 in SCD versus Editas, which showed higher HbF induction for Beam-101: One abstract showed that Beam manages to bypass two potential off-target effects of base editing. Last year, Beam went up considerably after preclinical data was presented in two abstracts at ASH. Animal studies have shown robust HbF induction using this technology. Thus, the technology is able to improve the volume of HbF available in the body, which, it is conjectured, will be useful for patients with SCD and thalassemia. The technology edits a certain point mutation, inducing it to cause these cells to exhibit a hereditary trait seen in certain individuals where they persist with Fetal hemoglobin or HbF throughout their lives. That depends on how these get resolved, and how soon.īEAM-101 has broadly successful data in animal studies. However, persistent safety-related questions from the FDA about base edited molecules may (or may not) be a bad thing. It was lifted in a few months, so one would expect a similar situation obtaining with Verve. Beam's own BEAM-201's IND targeting CD7 for relapsed, refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia was also put on a clinical hold last year. The problem is, this is not an one-off event. I discussed this in my February article on Verve. Last year, this program was put on a clinical hold on what are exclusively safety issues. Its IND was cleared last year.īeam also licensed its base editing technology to Verve Therapeutics ( VERV), whose VERV-101 uses it to treat heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH). It has only one clinical program, BEAM-101 for Sickle Cell Disease or SCD, and this program is all base editing. Interestingly, while prime editing is the next generation technology compared, in some respects, to even CRISPR/Cas9, Beam's current pipeline is entirely focused on base editing. It also has exclusive rights to prime editing technology, which can insert or delete longer DNAs. Base editing is the simplest form of gene editing that changes a single DNA letter. The stock price has fallen 30% as well.Ĭo-founded by David Liu, the Broad Institute and Harvard biochemist who also founded Editas, Beam is the leading developer of genetic therapies using base editing. Today, despite some derisking events, it has a market cap of $2.6bn. I covered Beam Therapeutics ( NASDAQ: BEAM) in April last year, when the stock had a market cap of $3.7bn.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |