The Battle For Sickle Cell

I wrote here a couple of years ago about the problems being experienced by Bluebird Bio, pioneers in commercializing human gene therapies. The summary is that despite getting three of these through FDA approval, the company was in desperate conditions and heading for bankruptcy, because none of them were being taken up by potential patients in enough numbers to justify the costs.

They went public back in 2013, and at one point their stock was nearly $50/share. But those difficulties sank them, and last year they were acquired by a private equity group at what must have been well under a dollar per share. They’ve been renamed back to their original “Genetix” in an attempt to leave the bad times behind.