CRISPR Gene Editing Developments Are Prompting a Surge of Interest Among Stock Market Investors Hoping for a Big Payoff

Detecting great promise in the various therapies that companies are working on using CRISPR gene editing, investors are eyeing biotechnology and life sciences companies to build their fortunes.

The prospect of using genetic engineering to cure a whole host of human ailments certainly is attractive to financiers and investors. A new report from Investor’s Business Daily indicates that treatments based on CRISPR technology should grow into an enormous market.

ABCs of CRISPR

Developed in 2012, CRISPR stands for “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.” Scientists use it to make changes inside living cells. You can remove cells from a patient’s body, alter them with CRISPR and then infuse them back into the patient for an attempt at a cure.

Many diseases (as many as 5,000 or more) result from just one mutation in a gene. This is why CRISPR is such an exciting and powerful tool. Editing a single problematic gene is a dramatically simple and versatile approach to so many ailments.

Companies Now Making Investments in CRISPR Gene Editing Projects

For a better idea about the state of CRISPR stocks, it’s useful to consider recent ventures by businesses working on gene editing solutions.

Bayer has made a deal with Mammoth Bioscience, noted Investor’s Business Daily. At the same time, Pfizer is now in partnership with Beam Therapeutics. The investments total approximately $2.75 billion in current and planned payments. This huge amount of capital ensures that companies can really start investigating CRISPR technology to cure human diseases.

Meanwhile, CRISPR Therapeutics is planning to launch the first drug based on CRISPR in 2023, to counter blood diseases beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease, which are inherited conditions in search of a lasting treatment.

The idea of curing liver diseases is the focus of Intellia Therapeutics. It is using CRISPR technology to change people’s genes, prompting more interest in investors in gene editing processes. For people who have lost their eyesight from a genetic disorder, Editas Medicine is working on bringing back their vision with CRISPR.

A Future of Less Expensive Treatments for Serious Diseases

One major benefit of applying CRISPR gene editing to the problem of diseases is that the new cure could prove to be less expensive than what’s currently available. Investor’s Business Daily explained that a drug named Oxbryta comes at a cost of $127,00 per year, made by Global Blood Therapeutics.

That amounts to $1.27 million for a patient using it for a decade. So investors in partnership with large pharmaceutical companies are eyeing CRISPR to create more immediate cures that do not require long-term chronic therapy lasting a decade or more.

A single shot via gene therapy would present a major leap in how we regard and treat dangerous diseases.

Upcoming treatment modalities could see patients having problematic genes removed in the doctor’s office through infusion treatment based on CRISPR gene editing, and then possibly having much more improved versions of genes inserted, to promote greater health with fewer office visits and procedures.

Enthusiasm From Investors Seen to Propel Further Research and Development

With so much activity among investors making deals with large bioscience organizations to capitalize and develop new therapies thanks to CRISPR gene editing, we are bound to see some exciting developments coming through the pipeline.

Patients with rare diseases are looking forward to these developments. And as more companies find success with CRISPR tools, it seems they will grow confident in exploring even more areas to use genetic editing of live human cells that we can barely imagine today.