Ver­tex pays CRISPR $900M to take con­trol of sick­le cell part­ner­ship, bet­ting they can beat blue­bird -- and re­new­ing an­a­lyst­s' skep­ti­cism

When Ver­tex chair­man Jef­frey Lei­den and CRISPR Ther­a­peu­tics CEO Samarth Kulka­rni got on the call for the first meet­ing of the year, the tenor was dif­fer­ent than in the dozens of con­ver­sa­tions the two had had since they first teamed back in 2015.

Ver­tex and CRISPR had just shown cu­ra­tive re­sults in ten pa­tients for their gene ther­a­py for sick­le cell dis­ease and be­ta tha­lassemia. Mean­while, their main ri­val in the field, blue­bird bio, had suf­fered the lat­est in a string of man­u­fac­tur­ing set­backs, push­ing back their time­line by a year.

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