The Battle Over CRISPR Could Make Or Break Some Biotech Companies
By Farai Chideya,
FiveThirtyEight
| 01. 25. 2016
[cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
Untitled Document
When is $100 million not $100 million? When it’s a proxy, maybe even something akin to a bet.
The nice, round figure is the target initial public offering value for Editas Medicine, a biotechnology firm with a mission of using gene editing to treat disease. The company has already raised more than $160 million from investors, and initial evaluations of the IPO said it was almost certain to be exceeded when the stock started trading publicly.
But Editas could face a big problem. The company has hitched its fortunes to CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-editing technology embroiled in concerns over ethics and, most immediately, a patent dispute. Editas licensed the technology in 2014 from the patent holder, scientists from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, as part of its research into genomic medicine, including cancer immunotherapies. But earlier this month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office accepted a challenge to the Broad Institute group’s patent from the University of California, which is backing a rival group of scientists. Without licensing from the eventual winner of the...
Related Articles
A Review of Exposed by Becky McClain
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
— John Lewis
Becky McClain became famous when she successfully sued Pfizer, one of the very largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies. She...
By Katherine Long, Ben Foldy, and Lingling Wei, The Wall Street Journal | 12.13.2025
Inside a closed Los Angeles courtroom, something wasn’t right.
Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again.
A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental...
By Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 12.10.2025
Micah Nerio had known since his early 30s that he wanted to be a father, even if he did not have a partner. He spent a decade saving up to pursue surrogacy, an expensive process where he would create embryos...
By Carter Sherman, The Guardian | 12.08.2025
A huge defense policy bill, revealed by US lawmakers on Sunday, does not include a provision that would have provided broad healthcare coverage for in vitro fertilization (IVF) for active-duty members of the military, despite Donald Trump’s pledge...
