Al­ler­gan/Ed­i­tas fi­nal­ly kick off CRISPR tri­al — mark­ing first in vi­vo test of the gene-edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy

More three years af­ter Al­ler­gan $AGN dipped its toes in­to the world of CRISPR/Cas9 gene edit­ing by en­list­ing Ed­i­tas $ED­IT as a part­ner — the com­pa­nies are now off to the races with a tri­al in pa­tients with a rare eye dis­ease.

This tri­al marks the first in­stance of us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to ed­it DNA with­in the body.

Mean­while, part­ners Ver­tex $VRTX and CRISPR Ther­a­peu­tics $CR­SP kick­start­ed a tri­al ear­li­er this year that em­ployed the tech­nol­o­gy to en­gi­neer a gene-edit­ed stem cell ther­a­py to treat pa­tients suf­fer­ing from se­vere he­mo­glo­binopathies, a group of blood dis­or­ders. Sang­amo Ther­a­peu­tics $SG­MO has test­ed its old­er zinc fin­ger tech­nol­o­gy in pa­tients with two lyso­so­mal stor­age dis­eases, but a set­back dif­fused en­thu­si­asm for the pro­gram — but the com­pa­ny bounced back with en­cour­ag­ing ear­ly da­ta on its he­mo­phil­ia pro­gram part­nered with Pfiz­er.

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