Crispr Therapeutics AG (CRSP)

[north40000]

CRSP: GILD mentioned the gene-editing technology in its AH conference call last evening. Perhaps the CSO and CEO discussion elaborating on slides 39-51 is the news you are looking for:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9Mzk3OTQ2fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1&cb=636534633626809804

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4143778-gilead-sciences-gild-q4-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single


http://investors.gilead.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=69964&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2330690

From the Q&A:

"Brian Abrahams - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Hi. Thanks very much for taking my question. In the CAR T space, obviously we've seen some consolidation lately. I'm just curious coming out of the CDL acquisition now, where should we look for your focus of investments going forward in technology enhancements that are going to be the most important for long-term competitive positioning, enhancement of delivery and expansion into additional populations from here? Thanks.

John F. Milligan - Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Yes. Hi, Brian. It's John. So just a couple of comments on where we're going to go next. Without giving you any specifics, we have been fairly open in our conversations that we do think that there are additional technologies we want to use to enhance the capabilities we have, including gene editing technology. That's something we've talked about previously.

Obviously, there are several areas where we want to try to figure out where we could be more effective. One is increasing the number of targets that we can go at, so we're looking at additional targets. We are looking at ways that we can perhaps move from autologous to allogeneic or sort of universal donor CAR T. So that's technology that Kite was working on, and that we will continue to work on. Gene editing plays into that in some areas.

And then of course, anything that we could use to try to lessen the side effects of CAR T would be important to us. So we're looking at technologies, thoughts on how we could have perhaps a lower cytokine release syndrome, perhaps decrease the neurotoxicity associated with this. So all of these things are important to us, and we're very, very actively looking at these technologies right now.