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Intellia Therapeutics, a biotech company that aims to use a revolutionary gene editing technology to treat rare diseases, is looking to raise as much as $120 million in an IPO to advance its early-stage science.
The company, based in Cambridge, Mass., has yet to disclose how many shares it will offer and at what price range, saying only that it plans to use the proceeds on projects, still in development, that use CRISPR-Cas9 technology to cut-and-paste genomic code.
Intellia’s move follows a successful public debut for rival Editas Medicine, a CRISPR-focused drug developer that raised $94.4 million in a February IPO.
Aside from sharing a common approach to gene editing, the two companies are linked by an ongoing patent dispute between their scientific founders, with each claiming ownership of the CRISPR idea. In documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Intellia acknowledged that pending litigation between the parties “may adversely affect our ability to utilize this intellectual property.”
Each company has benefited from a surge in interest in the nascent field of genome editing, which has produced stunning results in lab tests. The first article describing how CRISPR could be used to edit genes appeared about three years ago, and more than 2,600 have followed.
Read full, original post: Gene-editing biotech Intellia files for $120 million IPO
