Aurora Therapeutics scraps CRISPR program after 7 months, undercut by Beam Therapeutics

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Aurora Therapeutics, a startup focused on building personalized gene-editing drugs, has scrapped its lead program and slashed staff, just seven months after it launched , STAT has learned.

A company spokesperson declined to say how many employees were laid off, or whether any of the startup’s three-person leadership team would stay on. Aurora’s chief scientific officer left the company earlier this year.

The company appears to have been undercut by Beam Therapeutics, a larger and more established competitor. Just a month after Aurora launched, Beam announced it was already advancing its own set of custom gene editors for the exact same disease.

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