This is going to be the first post of 5 regarding crispr, and why it's the play of the decade 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀. Mods, thank you so much for letting me post it. If there's anything I need to do I'm happy to make any edits (no pun intended).
The next post will be about their current drug pipeline. This DD series is the product of 80 hours of reading 10-k's, licensing agreements, court filings, and a lot of adderall.
Intro
What is crispr? Crispr stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. It's a tool that is found in bacteria that can simply put can edit genes.
Why should I care? Crispr is easily on of the biggest discoveries of the 21st century, and received a Nobel for its discovery last year. It's not an understatement that in the next coming years crispr will impact just about every part of our lives. It's not just me saying this. Bill Gates \(poured in $100M\), and momma Cathie believe that this is one of the most revolutionary things of this century. Joe Davis of Vanguard found the idea multiplier to be similar to how the internet took off.
If you cannot see this can change the world crispr could help by eliminating that extra chromosome you probably have.
Editas ($EDIT)
Editas is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focusing on using crispr as a treatment for genetic disorders (in vivo), and for various forms of cancer (ex vivo).
Their business model is actually pretty smart. They're targeting rare diseases for drug development, and licensing out the IP for crispr. Contrary to popular belief rare diseases are incredibly profitable, and easier to develop. You essentially can monopolize a disease, and the market is so small competitors rarely pop up. The IP though is going to be the breadwinner. Essentially any drug developed with crispr will give an 8%-13% royalty to $EDIT. Not to get too technical, but their technology platform is pretty revolutionary, and far exceeds anything else on the market. They estimate they can target about 95% of the human genome.
One drug of note in their pipeline that is of interest is EDIT-201. EDIT-201 is essentially engineered T cells with CARs and Engineered TCRs that have been genetically modified to recognize and kill other cells. This is an interesting treatment solid forms of cancer. This could potentially be an alternative, or complementary to chemotherapy. The collaboration is with Juno Therapeutics (acquired by BMY) who have so far contributed substantial funds towards the project along with resources. Others include sickle cell, usher syndrome, and a form of genetic blindness that are all in clinical trials.
The patent
$EDIT has the exclusive license for use of crispr in humans through the BROAD institute. There are 3 main universities fighting for the patent. This has been a decade long quarter billion dollar legal battle over who owns crispr that is coming to a close. To say the patent battle is simple is a huge understatement. But, there is a consensus slowly [forming that $EDIT will acquire the patent](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/latest-round-crispr-patent-battle-ha