There was biotech news up and down the East Coast this week. In Boston, all eyes were on the first biotech IPO of the year—and the sector let out a collective sigh when things went well. New York, meanwhile, suffered a tough blow to its life sciences scene, as one of its strongest advocates announced plans to head westward. And in the nation’s capital, executives from Turing Pharmaceuticals and Valeant Pharmaceuticals were blasted by congress at a hearing/political circus on drug pricing. Those stories and more below.
—The gene editing system known as CRISPR-Cas9 made its debut on Wall Street this week when Cambridge, MA-based Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT) raised $94 million in an IPO
—the first public biotech offering of the year. Editas priced within its expected range, selling 5.9 million shares at $16 apiece, and ended its first trading day up 13.8 percent to $18.20—good news for a sector that needed some. Now comes the hard part: Can Editas turn CRISPR-Cas9 into therapeutics? And will investors be patient enough to wait through the inevitable twists and turns facing a new technology?
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