2/IMO the most significant corporate event in Q4 was $CRSP announcement that regulatory Exa-cel submissions of both #SickleCell & #BetaThalassemia validated in the #EU & #UK & that the @US_FDA BLA submission is on track by the end of Q1 ‘23 - possibly reaching the #markets in ‘23
3/Exa-cel/CTX001 - the key program in $CRSP portfolio, is an #autologous Ex-Vivo #CRISPR/#Cas9#GeneEditing therapy aimed for patients suffering from #TDT or severe #SCD. The latest readout for both programs was phenomenal with 42/44 TDT & 31/31(!) demonstrated remarkable results
4/Last December - during #ASH22@CRISPRTX & $VRTX presented an updated clinical data from the exa-cel trail taken from 75 #patients: 44 TDT+31 #sicklecelldisease & with a long follow-up. The data demonstrates that exa-cel has the potential to be a one-time functional #cure.
5/Exa-cel was submitted to the @US_FDA for BLA rolling review with expected completion of the submission package by the end of Q1 2023. If approved - Exa-cel will be the first ever #CRISPR product to be commercialised & marketed thus making @CRISPRTX the first to sell a product.
6/@CRISPRTX second program is CTX110 - a wholly owned donor-derived #GeneEditing#allogeneic antigen receptor T cell #CAR-T #therapy targeting CD19+ B-cell malignancies. CTX110 has also been granted a Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy - #RMAT designation from the @US_FDA.
7/Patients that were treated with CTX110 as part of the @CRISPRTX#CARBON#clinicaltrail have shown good results. CTX110 was well tolerated across all dose levels & patients in CR remain clinically well without receiving any systematic anti-#Cancer#Therapy other than CTX110👇
8/@CRISPRTX has recently provided a clinical update for both its Part A & Part B of $CRSP ongoing Phase 1 #CARBON trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of CTX110 its wholly-owned #allogeneic CAR T #celltherapy targeting CD19+ B-#cell malignancies. Here is a 🧵 that I wrote👇
9/@CRISPRTX will initiate clinical trials for CTX112 - next gen CAR T platforms targeting CD19+ B-cell malignancies, in 1H 2023. CTX112 incorporates the edits in CTX110 plus additional edits to the genes encoding Regnase-1 & TGFBRII, thus increasing the potency of the CAR T cells
10/CTX130 is another $CRSP wholly-owned #allogeneic CAR-T #CellTherapy targeting #CD70, for the treatment of Mycosis Fungoides & #Sézary Syndrome - both types of cutaneous T-cell #lymphoma. In September @CRISPRTX announced that the @US_FDA has granted it RMAT designation.
11/CTX130 has showed overall a good safety profile - patients that were treated with CTX130 as part of the @CRISPRTX#COBALT#clinicaltrail have shown good results with #disease control rate DCR of 90% (N=10), 70% ORR & 30% CR rate. $CRSP CTX130 recent readout was also promising
13/@ViaCyte & $CRSP have 3 #CRISPR#GeneEditing programs - VCTX210 in which the first patient was dosed as part of a Phase 1 clinical trial. $CRSP expects to move the other two In-Vivo programs - VCTX211 & VCTX212 - both for #diabetes into the clinic in the next 18-24 months👇
14/@CRISPRTX has named recently another 2 new #CardioVascular programs 1)CTX310 for #ANGPTL3 & 2)CTX330 for PCSK9. Regarding both - IMO $VERV is much more advanced & especially after @VerveTx’s recent data & the ongoing #Heart-1 trail it is most likely to dominate this market.
15/As of 12/31/22 $CRSP had capital resources of $2.24B & R&D expenses of $103M. IMO @CRISPRTX’s current cash position will enable it to continue to develop its clinical pipeline with hopefully the first #CRISPR commercial product hitting the markets in 2023 & generating revenue
16/With an highly anticipated first ever @US_FDA approval for a #GeneEditing platform expected in 2023 @CRISPRTX will be the 1ST #CRISPR company with a product in the market & with a strong cash position of $2.24B - @CRISPRTX IMO continues to look very solid & promising. $CRSP
1/Here’s an excellent article - published in the recent @WIRED issue, by Nobel prize winner Jennifer Doudna about how AI & machine learning are amplifying the impact of CRISPR & Gene editing in all walks of life - medicine, agriculture, climate change & research landscape.🧵👇
2/Jennifer Doudna is an American biochemist who discovered CRISPR Cas9 as a Gene Editing tool & had received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier for their discovery. She also founded several BioTech companies like $NTLA, $CRBU, Scribe, Mammoth & others.
3/According to Jennifer Doudna - 2025 will be a pivotal year in which the ever growing use of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning will amplify the effects and reach of CRISPR and Gene Editing in many aspects of our lives - curative medicines, agriculture & lab research.
1/🚨WOW! $SANA announced initial positive results from its first-in-human study of UP421 - an allogeneic primary islet Cell Therapy engineered with Sana’s proprietary hypoimmune (HIP) technology for patients with type 1 Diabetes, without the use of any immunosuppression $XBI 🧵👇
2/Type 1 diabetes is a chronic (life-long) autoimmune disease that prevents the patient’s pancreas from making Insulin - an important hormone that regulates the amount of glucose (sugar) in the blood. Type 1 diabetes affects both children and adults & requires daily management with insulin injections and blood sugar monitoring.
3/Type 1 Diabetes affects roughly 8.4M people worldwide. The number of patients is constantly rising and the prevalence of type 1 diabetes is expected to double over the next decade. Interestingly enough almost 80% of T1D patients are from high-income countries with insurance.
1/This great @WSJ’s 📊 shows how after spending tens of billions of dollars for a single BioTech company, big Pharma moguls such as $ABBV, $AZN, $BMY, $AMGN, $PFE & $VRTX have all shifted to acquiring smaller targets of >$5B - for both regulatory & financials reasons. $XBI 🧵👇
2/All 17 deals made by big Pharma during the first 6 months of ‘24 were $5B or less. During the same period last year, big Pharma made 9 deals, including 2 that were $10B or more. 9 of the 17 deals were for privately held companies, compared to 1 during the same period in 2023.
3/Last year’s big acquisitions were led by @pfizer’s $43B purchase of cancer biotech $SGEN ❤️👇. By contrast & to demonstrate how things have changed, the biggest deal so far in 2024 was @VertexPharma $4.9B purchase of Alpine Immune Sciences & its experimental kidney drug. $PFE
The biggest problem of Gene Editing & Gene therapy is delivery - how to deliver a genetic payload to the exact desired location. Here’s a great Infograph which shows which BioTech companies use Viral delivery methods (AAVs, LVs) compared to non-viral platforms (NLPs). $XBI
2/Must of the companies - as you can see in the graph m☝️- use a viral based delivery platform for Gene Therapy / Gene Editing treatments, mostly AAV - Adeno-Associated Virus based delivery. AAV is a naturally occurring virus being transformed into a delivery mechanism by replacing its viral DNA with new DNA, thus making it a precisely coded vector & it is no longer considered a virus, as most of its viral components have been replaced.
3/The main problem with AAV delivery system is that it is limited to the size of the payload which can fit into the virus vassal. It could also cause the patient an inflammatory response due to this external virus activity. This led to a search for a non-viral mechanism. $XBI
1/@nvelop_tx has presented its proprietary delivery system - DLVR-M, which has successfully demonstrated improved delivery of CRISPR, base editing & prime editing platforms to different human cell types. DLVR-M could be the key in overcoming the obstacle of CRISPR delivery. $XBI
2/Every Gene Therapy is combined from 2 components - the genetic payload which is the mechanism for fixing the genetic disease or the cure itself & a delivery vehicle which needs to deliver the “package” to a specific human tissue & location. Just Imagine a pickup truck & a box.
3/As of today the only approved delivery platform for Gene Therapy / Gene Editing is AAV - Adeno-Associated Virus based delivery. AAV is a naturally occurring virus being transformed into a delivery mechanism by replacing its viral DNA with new DNA thus making it a precisely coded vector & it is no longer considered a virus, as most of its viral components have been replaced
1/WOW! hC Bioscience announces its first ever tRNA-based program for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). hC is developing anticodon engineered tRNAs as a potential treatment for DMD patients with shortened & nonfunctional dystrophin due to premature termination codons (PTCs). $XBI
2/Duchenne is a severe progressive disease which rapidly worsening children’s muscle function often using a wheelchair by early adolescence & eventually needing artificial ventilation to breathe. DMD is caused by mutations to dystrophin that affect about 300,000 males worldwide & PTCs account for approximately 26% of cases.
3/A nonsense mutation or premature termination codons (PTCs) is an alteration in the genetic code that prematurely halts the synthesis of an essential protein. The resulting disorder is determined by which protein cannot be expressed in its entirety and is no longer functional, such as dystrophin in Duchenne