From Napster to NAB CURE- another Parker success

Actual lifted from Fierce publications In all the talk of “disruption” and “hacking cancer,” you’d be forgiven for not taking internet billionaire Sean Parker seriously in the life sciences world. But he just got federal backing to run the world’s first-ever CRISPR/Cas9 trial, which could alter the way many diseases, especially cancer, are treated. You’d be hard-pressed to find another first-in-human trial gain so much attention because, yes, despite all the column inches it’s generated, CRISPR has not yet entered the clinic. But its preclinical activity has caused much hype given its gene-editing capabilities, with its core tech centering on a simple method for reengineering DNA--which may well have profound consequences in treating a number of diseases. Late yesterday, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) panel ruled unanimously (but with one abstention) to let the first trial for a CRISPR candidate run. This is just the first step, however, as the FDA as well as the medical centers where it’ll be run will still need to clear the study before it can actually start recruiting and testing patients. So who’s the first pioneer? CRISPR Therapeutics, Caribou Biosciences, Editas ($EDIT), or maybe Intellia ($NTLA)? Surely Novartis ($NVS) must be involved? Nope, it’s Sean Parker, founder of Napster and the first president of Facebook, who, not short of a few bucks (net worth estimated at $2.4 billion), has stolen a march on the CRISPR pioneers. (Editas was in fact down 7% at the end of play yesterday after the news, with Intellia down 4.5%.) The trial, should it gain the regulatory nod, will be run by a group of University of Pennsylvania researchers and funded by the Parker Institute. The study would also be conducted at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas and the University of California, San Francisco. Penn will be its spiritual home, however, as Penn’s Dr. Carl June is one of the major innovators in T cell biology. Speaking at the Forbes Philanthropy Summit earlier this month, June said the idea is to make T cells, a type of white blood cell, “better than nature made them.” The cells will be edited to lack several genes, including one that allows them to respond to a protein called PD-1, which acts as an off switch that some cancers hijack to evade the immune system. PD-1 was the last next big thing in cancer, with Merck ($MRK) gaining the first approval for its PD-1 drug Keytruda in 2014, although the market leader, despite being approved second, is Bristol-Myers Squibb’s ($BMY) Opdivo. Roche ($RHHBY) also joined the party earlier this year with its PD-L1 drug Tecentriq.