RESEARCH

• The research of the company is focused on the CRISPR base editing technology which they are working on.
• Beam Therapeutics is also working on base editor therapeutics research which will enable them to manufacture new brands of genetic drugs.
• The company is also using different technologies to transfer base editors to different cells and tissues.
• One of the researches conducted by the company's investigators showed the possibility of prenatal editing metabolic genes using CRISPR.
• Another study also showed that there was a possibility of editing genomic DNA and targeting this for therapeutic purposes.

LEADERSHIP TEAM

•  Beam Therapeutics management team comprises co-founders, chief executive officer, chief scientific officer, chief legal officer, senior vice presidents, vice presidents and board members.
• The co-founders are David Liu, Feng Zhang and Keith Joung and they are professors of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Neuroscience and Pathology respectively.
•  John Evans came on board as the chief executive officer in 2017. He was appointed as a board member as well.
•  Giuseppe Ciaramella is the chief scientific officer of the company, and he has over two decades experience in drug discovery.
•  Dr Christine Bellon occupies two positions in the company namely chief legal officer and senior vice president.
•  Susan O’Connor works as the chief human resources officer.
• The senior vice presidents of the company are Suzanne Fleming (handles finance), Courtney Wallace (handles Business Development and Strategy) and Christine Bellon who also doubles as the chief legal officer.
•  Dana Levasseur, Francine Gregoire and Manmohan Singh are the vice president hematology, vice president for liver diseases and vice president of pharmaceutical sciences and delivery technologies respectively.
• Kristina Burow, Mark Fishman, Stephen Knight and Robert Nelsen are the board members of the company.

COMPANY BACKGROUND

• It was founded by David Liu, Feng Zhang, J. Keith Joung, John Evans in 2017 so as to enhance CRISPR base editing technology.
• The headquarters is situated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
• The company is the first to use CRISPR base editing to develop drugs to treat genetic diseases.
• Its main industry of operation is Biotechnology. However, the company also works on drug discovery.
• The company has about 61-71 employees and an estimated annual revenue of $1,500,000.
• Beam Therapeutics partners with Harvard University, The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and Editas Medicine.

CAPITAL RAISED

• The company has participated in two funding rounds from its inception.
• It has been able to raise a total funding amount of $222,000,000 from both rounds.
• The first funding round was done on May 14, 2018, and $87,000,000 was raised through the Series A funding.
•  The investors for the Series A funding were F-Prime Capital and ARCH Venture Partners.
• The second funding round was done on March 6, 2019, and $135,000,000 was raised through the Series B funding.
•  The investors for the Series B funding were Redmile Group, ARCH Venture Partners, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Omega Funds, F-Prime Capital Partners, GV, Cormorant Asset Management and Eight Roads Ventures.

NEWS ARTICLES

• Beam Therapeutics granted Bio Palette which is a Japanese company the right to use its intellectual property to improve Asia's microbiome-related therapeutics.
• The company is working with Verve Therapeutics on the reduction of heart disease risk.
• Beam Therapeutics is using CRISPR to treat genetic diseases as a healthcare startup.
• Beam Therapeutics was granted a global license to market the CRISPR base editing technology.

SIGNIFICANT ANNOUNCEMENTS

• The company announced the current leadership team in May 2019.
• The company's CEO presented the overview of the company at the Jefferies 2019 Healthcare Conference.
• The company presented preclinical data from the base editing platform at the 2019 Annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy.
• The funding realized from the 2019 Series B funding would be used to develop the company's CRISPR technologies and expand their platforms.

RESEARCH STRATEGY