CRISPR (NTLA, EDIT, CRSP + CRBU) + BEAM (added 10/21)

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I'm really glad to see you guys agreeing on moonshots. As a person with a non-medical background, my moonshot descriptions would read more like the feverish dreams of an internet lunatic. :) :)  I much prefer PeteD01's insights.

[PeteD01]

FYI

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-designer-dna-is-changing-medicine/


An interview with the Intellia CEO John Leonard (absolutely no hype here):

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/07/01/intellia-ceo-on-crispr-gene-editing-treatment-secondary-offering.html

[bwall]

Great inks @PeteD01, thanks for sharing.

NTLA is delivering CRISPR into the body, which I think is a bit more difficult than the approach taken by CRSP, but the potential uses/targets are greater.

NTLA stock has drifted down somewhat since the news broke, now trading under $140, below the secondary offering price of $145. The main thing is that NTLA has proven that their technology will work, which is a big deal and why it's still a buy at, say, $140, when it might not have been a buy before the news broke and was trading at $65. Now that proof of concept exists, the stock got a whole lot less riskier even though the price went up.

@RunningintoFI ; I'm intrigued by the idea of investing in auxiliary companies. Can you provide a short list of some of the most relevant names? I'd love to learn more.

[PeteD01]

The story of CRISPR up to 2015:


https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(15)01705-5.pdf

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The story of CRISPR up to 2015:

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(15)01705-5.pdf

Thanks for sharing. There was a lot of info packed into just a few well written pages. Lots of takeaways from the article:

1) Research is incredibly hard. Lots of people observed CRISPR years earlier, but figuring out it's significance wasn't easy.

2) Lots of very important papers were rejected by peer-reviewed journals because......  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. This stuff it hard to get right, even for editors who have amazing stuff served up to them on platters. It's hard.

3) Lots of people much, much smarter than myself took a shot at trying to decipher CRISPR and didn't get it right. I feel bad for these people, to have come so close, yet....... not quite be the one to cross the finish line first. Research is hard.

4) It was a world-wide effort. People from around the world did the basic research necessary to figure it out.

It's amazing that this discovery was ever made. The implications of discovery are still being ...... researched.

[PeteD01]

And here is an almost up to date review of the current state of clinical research in CRISPR based therapeutics:

https://innovativegenomics.org/news/crispr-clinical-trials-2021/

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And here is an almost up to date review of the current state of clinical research in CRISPR based therapeutics:

https://innovativegenomics.org/news/crispr-clinical-trials-2021/

Thank you again for sharing another great article. This article is written for the lay-man and seems to explain what's going on rather well, both the potential and risk. It's hard to make a complex topic easy to understand and I think this article did that.

I think that there might be another company that recently began a study for CRISPR gene editing. Caribou Biosciences is tackling non-Hodgkin Lymphoma; https://www.cariboubio.com/pipeline/.

As best I can tell they began enrolling for the study just this month. Estimated completion date is 2025, which seems really optimistic to me. But, dunno, maybe not.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04637763?term=cb-010&draw=2&rank=1

[PeteD01]

Thanks!

Caribou Biosciences just had their IPO.
It has been around for ten years and seems to be the oldest of the clinical stage CRISPR companies and their scientific credentials look good.
I have put CRBU in my portfolio.

[bwall]

Thanks!

Caribou Biosciences just had their IPO.
It has been around for ten years and seems to be the oldest of the clinical stage CRISPR companies and their scientific credentials look good.
I have put CRBU in my portfolio.

I'm glad to hear that the company has your approval. I think it's a great opportunity. IPO was last week, market cap is under $1b and it's still at the IPO price. Although the market cap might have benefitted from the sizzle around NTLA and a bit prematurely boosted. But, no matter, it's still at the early stages.

As you mention, the company is already ten years old and just now starting clinical trials. That shows how difficult it is to get this stuff right. But, if they can cure (!) non-Hodgkin lymphoma, then, yeh, that's a BFD, in my non-medical random person opinion. I need to raise cash to get a position started.

[PeteD01]

Just came across this short article from July 27 which mentions the small basket approach for investing in gene editing. I agree with them that it makes sense in the  gene editing subsector. My inclusion criteria are stricter than theirs but the basket ends up to be almost the same:

"That's why many recommend buying a small amount of several companies focusing on a particular area. Nowhere does this make more sense than in gene editing. With its combination of progress, funding, and leadership, Caribou Biosciences has earned a place in that basket."

https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/07/27/reasons-caribou-best-gene-editing-stock-portfolio/

[PeteD01]

A quick update as these stocks are now much cheaper than last year.

I forgot to update that I reluctantly added BEAM to the basket in 10/2021.
Volatility is high as expected and I added on the way down and I´m now approximately 15% down, which is not bad.

The basket now contains approximately equally weighted:
NTLA, EDIT, CRSP, CRBU, BEAM

I just found an analysis trying to answer the same question I am asking and their basket of high risk gene editing is identical to mine. I take that as confirmation that my analysis (strictly based on technology (CRISPR and, reluctantly, base editing AND active clinical trials) is reasonable and no new players with these  characteristics have appeared:

https://www.nanalyze.com/2022/06/complete-list-gene-editing-stocks/