Graphite Bio gives up on lead sick­le cell pro­gram, halves staff in wake of safe­ty scare

It took a lit­tle more than a month for Graphite Bio to con­clude that there’s no way out of the safe­ty is­sues un­earthed in the first clin­i­cal tri­al of its first gene edit­ing pro­gram. Not now.

Hav­ing paused a Phase I/II tri­al in the be­gin­ning of 2023 af­ter the first pa­tient to re­ceive the prod­uct de­vel­oped a se­ri­ous side ef­fect, Graphite says it’s shelv­ing the pro­gram, nu­la­be­glo­gene au­to­gedtem­cel, and kick­ing off a process to ex­plore strate­gic al­ter­na­tives — some­thing that of­ten re­sults in a sale, re­verse merg­er or even wind-down these days.

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