With the complete acquisition of Life Edit, ElevateBio will be able to integrate that company’s genome editing capabilities with its cell and gene therapies.
Months after raking in a massive $525 million in funding, ElevateBio bolstered its gene editing capabilities with the acquisition of N.C.-based Life Edit Therapeutics, a company developing a next-generation gene editing platform designed to target nearly any genomic sequence.
Cambridge, Mass.-based ElevateBio, which launched in 2019, acquired the stake in Life Edit Therapeutics owned by AgBiome Delta. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Life Edit spun out of AgBiome last year, and shortly after that, ElevateBio acquired a stake in the company. Life Edit Therapeutics has one of the largest arrays of novel RNA-guided nucleases and base editors globally. That platform provides greater specificity and broader genome access. Life Edit’s gene editing technologies have the potential for any genomic sequence of interest to be removed, added, or altered.
With the complete acquisition of Life Edit, ElevateBio will be able to integrate that company’s genome editing capabilities with its own cell and gene therapies. Lie Edit’s capabilities will complement ElevateBio’s BaseCamp platform, a technology-enabled process development and CGMP manufacturing capability designed to advance the development of multiple therapeutics. According to ElevateBio, the inclusion of Life Edit’s platform will “more efficiently disrupt” the fields of cell and gene therapy.
Life Edit’s genome editing capabilities bolsters the company’s induced pluripotent stem cells, viral vector, and cell engineering platforms.
“Our vision is to build a world-class center of excellence in genome engineering to push the boundaries of therapeutic development and drive innovation for our own therapeutic pipeline as well as provide access to these critical technologies to our growing number of industry partners,” ElevateBio Chief Executive Officer David Hallal said in a statement.
The company’s goal is to expand the number of therapeutic uses by combining Life Edit’s gene engineering capabilities with ElevateBio’s iPSC technology, with the aim of potentially making universal or hypoimmune cells that go undetected by the immune system.
Mitchell Finer, CEO of Life Edit and president of R&D at ElevateBio, noted that access to RNA-guided nucleases and base editors that offer specificity and broad genome coverage are critical to cell and gene therapy development. The company believes that Life Edit’s technology is among the most versatile across the industry and provides enormous potential.
“By combining Life Edit’s gene engineering capabilities with ElevateBio’s iPSC technology, our goal is to expand the number of therapeutic uses, including potentially making universal or hypoimmune cells that go undetected by the immune system,” Finer said in a statement. “This integration will also enable Life Edit to have greater access to ElevateBio’s drug development and manufacturing capabilities as we build and advance the pipeline, which will initially focus on developing in vivo gene therapies to address neurologic conditions with high unmet need.”
ElevateBio’s programs will be complemented by the addition of Life Edit, the N.C.-company’s pipeline that focuses on in vivo gene therapies for neurologic conditions with high unmet needs will also benefit from the integration.
