Prime Medicine, a biotech whose wild ambitions for a powerful gene editing technology sank as the biotech market slumped, announced Monday it is replacing its CEO, laying off 25% of its staff, and scrapping its lead program.
The reorganization comes amid a prolonged winter for the gene editing field that has seen nearly every major company lay off staff or cut programs, sometimes despite promising data. A few companies have shut down altogether or merged out of existence.
Prime was initially formed in 2019, around a CRISPR-based technology from Broad Institute biochemist David Liu for making virtually any type of small edit to the genome: single-letter changes, small insertions, and small deletions.
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