Seeking to Join Editas, Intellia, CRISPR Therapeutics Makes Long Awaited IPO Push

Investors hoping to buy into the vast, yet still unproven drugmaking potential of the gene editing system CRISPR-Cas9 will soon have three different companies to choose from. CRISPR Therapeutics filed for an IPO on Friday, meaning it could soon join Boston-area rivals Editas Medicine and Intellia Therapeutics in the expanding club of publicly traded CRISPR-Cas9 drug developers.

Basel, Switzerland- and Cambridge, MA-based CRISPR has been slowly amassing rounds of venture funding, adding partners, and filling out an executive team over the past few years. Editas (NASDAQ: EDIT) and Intellia (NASDAQ: NTLA) have each gone public in 2016, and CRISPR has long been expected to join them. Should CRISPR complete the IPO, it’ll trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “CRSP.”

Over the past several years, CRISPR-Cas9 has captured the imaginations of scientists and drugmakers alike. It’s a tool currently used in research labs across the globe that one day might help perform genetic surgery to correct devastating diseases. There’s a long way to go first, of course. CRISPR-based therapies have only just begun their first clinical tests...