CRISPR trail­blaz­ers Zhang, Liu and Joung join forces to launch Beam with $87M and cut­ting-edge gene-edit­ing tech

Three of the founders be­hind the high pro­file gene-edit­ing com­pa­ny Ed­i­tas are tak­ing their sci­en­tif­ic prowess to a new ven­ture, launch­ing a start­up this week that ex­pands on the pi­o­neer­ing CRISPR tech the en­tire space is built on.

The new com­pa­ny — called Beam Ther­a­peu­tics — is step­ping out Mon­day with $87 mil­lion in launch mon­ey. In­vestors are back­ing true trail­blaz­ers in gene edit­ing, as Beam’s sci­en­tif­ic founders in­clude David Liu, now-se­r­i­al en­tre­pre­neur Feng Zhang, and J Kei­th Joung. All three are sci­en­tif­ic founders of Ed­i­tas, the CRISPR com­pa­ny launched in 2013 that now gar­ners a $1.7 bil­lion mar­ket cap.

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