Prime Medicine wins arbitration against Beam Therapeutics over gene-editing rights

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Prime Medicine said Wednesday that it had won an arbitration dispute against Beam Therapeutics, resolving for now a clash that had pitted two well-backed gene-editing companies that had been spun out of the same lab against each other.

An arbitrator ruled that Prime’s work on a gene-editing drug for the rare liver disease alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, or AATD, did not violate a 2019 agreement designed to prevent the two companies from competing against one another.

The ruling paves the way for Prime to start a clinical trial for AATD this quarter, lifting the biotech’s stock 11% Wednesday morning. The outcome, however, is a blow to Beam Therapeutics.

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