by Fred Fuld III
You may have seen it on the cover of Time Magazine, you may have watched the episode on 60 Minutes.
CRISPR.
So what is CRISPR?
The acronym CRISPR means “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”. What this means simply is that it is a technique for editing and splicing DNA much more quickly, simply, and less expensively than what was done previously. It is a revolutionary technique that could potentially cure any genetic disease.
There are several publicly traded companies that are in the CRISPR arena, both big and small. Obviously, the CRISPR technology industry is at its very early stages, so there are risks involved with some of the purer plays, none of which are currently generating earnings. Here are some of the pure plays.
Editas Medicine (EDIT) is a Cambridge, Massachusetts based genome editing company, focusing on treating patients with genetically defined diseases through the development of a proprietary genome editing platform based on CRISPR/Cas9 technology. The company sports a market cap of a bit over $687 million, and is debt free with $5.97 in cash per share.
Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA) is another pure play CRISPR stock, and has been collaborating with Novartis (NVS). Intellia is developing in vivo projects which target liver diseases, including transthyretin amyloidosis, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, hepatitis B virus, and inborn errors of metabolism; and ex vivo relating to chimeric antigen receptor T cell and hematopoietic stem cell product candidates. The stock has a market cap of $3.43 billion, cash per share of $9.66, and has no long term debt.
CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP) is a Swiss company which is developing transformative gene-based medicines for the treatment of serious human diseases using its regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats associated protein-9 (CRISPR/Cas9). It has a market cap of $3.96 billion, is debt free and has cash per share of $23.85.
CRISPR is a narrow niche of the biotechnology industry, but it could become the fastest growing and most significant of all the biotech businesses.
Disclosure: Author didn’t own any of the above at the time the article was written.