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Editas Medicine Raises $57M by Selling Future Payments From CRISPR Licensing Deal With Vertex Pharma

Light blue and white concept 3D Illustration of transparent DNA helix

NEW YORK – Editas Medicine has sold certain licensing fees and other payments it is slated to receive from Vertex Pharmaceuticals under a CRISPR license agreement to a subsidiary of DRI Healthcare Trust for $57 million in upfront cash, the company said on Thursday.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Editas said it will use the new funds to advance its therapeutic pipeline and other strategic priorities. "We are pleased to partner with DRI to monetize a portion of the licensing payments from the Vertex Cas9 license deal we announced last December, providing us with considerable non-dilutive capital that we can put to work immediately as we develop our pipeline of future medicines," Editas President and CEO Gilmore O'Neill said in a statement. "We look forward to an ongoing relationship with DRI as we continue to execute our strategy."

Editas is the exclusive licensee of certain patents covering the use of CRISPR technology in drug development, including a Cas9 patent estate owned by Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Broad Institute, and Rockefeller University.

In December 2023, the same month the US Food and Drug Administration approved Vertex's Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel) gene therapy, making it the first CRISPR gene-editing treatment to come to market, Vertex obtained a nonexclusive license to use Editas' CRISPR-Cas9 technology for developing ex vivo gene editing medicines for sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia that target the BCL11A gene, including Casgevy. After its initial approval in sickle cell disease, Casgevy was later approved by the FDA for treating beta thalassemia.

In the latest deal, in exchange for the upfront fee, DRI will receive up to 100 percent of certain future annual license fees payable to Editas, ranging from $5 million to $40 million per year, including certain sales-based fees. DRI will also get a mid-double-digit percentage of Editas' portion of a $50 million contingent upfront payment that it is eligible for under its license agreement with Vertex.

Editas said it retains rights to fixed annual licensing fees for 2024 and may receive another mid-single-digit million-dollar payment if Vertex achieves certain annual sales milestones.