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Editas Medicine to Present Data Demonstrating Progress Towards Transformative Gene Editing Medicines for the Treatment of Hemoglobinopathies and Cancer at the ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition
EDIT-301 preclinical data support differentiated approach to develop a transformative medicine for people living with transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia
About this update from Editas Medicine, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"EDIT-301 preclinical data support differentiated approach to develop a transformative medicine for people living with transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia Preclinical data demonstrating proprietary CRISPR/Cas12a multiplexed editing of iPSCs enhances iNK tumor killing ability, supporting promise as a potential therapeutic approach for solid tumors CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Editas Medicine, Inc. (Nasdaq: EDIT), a leading genome editing company, today announced that two scientific abstracts have been accepted for presentation at the 63rd Annual Meeting and Exposition of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), being held in Atlanta and virtually, December 11-14, 2021. The two abstracts outline preclinical data from the Company’s hemoglobinopathy and oncology programs. An additional oncology program abstract was published in Blood, the flagship journal of the American Society of Hematology. Editas Medicine presentations at ASH will include preclinical data demonstrating that: Edited peripheral blood CD34+ cells mobilized from transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT) patients demonstrated significantly improved red blood cell production and increased hemoglobin content, supporting the development of EDIT-301 for the treatment of TDT; andInduced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)-derived natural killer cells (iNKs), edited with proprietary CRISPR/Cas12a to double knock-out (DKO) CISH and TGFβR2, demonstrated robust tumor reduction in vivo as compared to wild type iNKs, supporting the development of DKO iNKs as a potent allogeneic cell-based medicine for cancer. “At ASH, we will present preclinical data from our EDIT-301 program that reinforces our belief that our differentiated therapeutic strategy leveraging our highly-specific engineered Cas12a enzyme with more physiologic targeting has great potential for transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia. We believe that EDIT-301 has the potential to be an efficacious autologous cell therapy for TDT, and we remain on track to file an IND by year-end,” said Mark S. Shearman, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Editas Medicine. “We will also share early exciting preclinical data showcasing how we are using our proprietary gene editing tools to produce a customized iNK cell that we believe will have highly potent activity across multiple tumor cell killing mechanisms and...