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A trio of startup companies rooted in the local life-sciences community is focusing on a task long seen as the Holy Grail of drug discovery: fixing broken genes.
Rival firms Editas Medicine Inc., Intellia Therapeutics Inc., and CRISPR Therapeutics are all pioneering an emerging technology known as gene editing. They use a new scientific tool called CRISPR-Cas9 that holds the promise of curing thousands of genetic diseases by cutting out and revising, removing, or repairing DNA, the building block of life.
“It’s a spectacular challenge,” says Katrine Bosley, chief executive of three-year-old Editas, which went public with its $94.4 million initial offering earlier this year. “The sense of urgency is very high. So is the sense of wanting to get it right. We have a long path ahead of us.”
In a biopharmaceutical sector constantly being reshaped by new science, from tissue engineering to immuno-oncology, genome editing is viewed by many as the rare breakthrough that could spawn numerous companies and treatments in the coming years.
“They’re just beginning to figure out the applications,” says Ellen Licking, a...